Innocent until proven guilty is not just a legal standard, it is a common expression for the standard any decent person uses. It's amazing that you and your ilk believe Merrick Garland had an ironclad "right to be heard" (which is a thing you all made up two years ago, as opposed to "innocent until proven guilty" which is a legitimate standard used elsewhere), but Brett Kavanaugh's legal career has to dead-end because some dingbat with ample credibility issues randomly makes a completely unsupported assertion about him.
There is more evidence of Garland kidnapping a princess and orchestrating a time loop in a conspiracy with fiends associated with the classical elements to gain immortality, than there is of Kavanaugh's misconduct.
I respect the decision of Collins, Flake and Manchin, and I don't think the Republicans should be demonized in such a way for these votes, but if I'd been a senator and free to vote my conscience without regard to party strategy, I do think that Kavanaugh's attitude in the hearings would've pushed me from a likely yes to a no.
And it's only the GOP that allows that sort of thing, while the Democrats march in lockstep with that "party strategy." Which of THEM were convinced by the preponderance of evidence against Clinton?
I notice you only ever respect Republicans who vote along with the Democrats. You decry partisanship whenever the GOP is standing up for their principles or voting in accordance with a very popular issue among voters, or objecting to, or resisting the Democrats, but you ignore that only one party votes along hard lines and accept whatever their talking points are for not reaching across the aisle or letting the party with a Senate majority and the White House appoint the justices they want. There are many Republican appointed justices who were liberals or swing votes, but every Democrat appointee since Byron White has been a hard leftist.
What Democrats have ever passed conservative bipartisan legislation? What Democrats reach across the aisle to assist the conservative agenda? EVERY contentious Supreme Court nominee has been by a Republican, and Graham's voting for Obama's picks is far more the rule of thumb for the GOP. Who'd we ever Bork or gin up nonsense like for Clarene Thomas? Yet you act like the refusal to hold hearings for a lame duck president's backdoor appointee when they had the votes is the worst thing ever done in the Supreme Court appointment process. Yeah, it was partisan, but that's how things are in this country. There is not some objectivly correct position or an aceptable-compromise middle that serves everyone. And furthermore, the GOP was willing to put its money where its mouth was. At a time when everyone expected the next president to be a Democrat, they set up a standard that was possibe for the Democrats to meet. As many Democrats gleefully pointed out, Hilary Clinton could have come up with someone they'd hate even more, and warned McConnell & company that this was their only chance to have a say. If Obama wanted to test their principles, he could have withdrawn Garland and tossed up Gorsuch or Kavanaugh and challenged the Senate Republicans to stick to their principle and block his lame duck appointment when he affected to believe that it would be a Democrat getting the next chance. What it came down to, is that it would ultimately be Hillary Clinton denying Garland his fictitious right to be heard, when she nominated some far-left extremist. If Garland had that right, Clinton could have preserved it, if she had won, as everyone expected at the time. And everyone knows she would not have, unless she struck some sort of behind-the-scenes deal with Ginsburg to retire, so she could have her own pick and posture with Garland.
The real reason why Democrats were using that "right to be heard" nonsense is that they planned on using the same old strategy of procedural tricks, slow-rolling and intimidation to try to shake enough weak-sister Republicans onto their side. And it's only Democrats who would call appearing before Senate Judiciary hearings a "right". For a Democratic nominee, there are the respectful greetings, softball questions and inquires confined strictly to relevant judicial stuff, and media coverage with a positive spin and harsh criticism of any Republican Senator who pushes too hard. What Democratic appointee has EVER been put through what Alito or Kavanaugh or Thomas or Bork did?
Where was your indignation about judicial partisanship when Ginsburg said she'd want to leave the country if Trump won or when Sotomayor asserted racial preferences for the bench?
Where is your concern generally when mountains are made of the Republicans' bad conduct molehills, which the Democrats in general have always had a greater percentage of degenerates, including unapologetic worship of Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Bob Byrd? Republicans go down for things that the average person on the street needs to have explained to him, like obscure violations of nitpicky regulations. They are charged with perjury not for directly denying actions they were proven to have commited, but for things like Scooter Libby's recollection of a casual conversation differing from that of a reporter's. The propaganda wing of the Democrats media has to actually explain to people that a Republican's actions constitute gay or racial codes. Strom Thurmond was constantly being painted as a racist, despite no hard facts to pin him on, aside from being a white man from the South (and the closest thing to racism in his past being too embarassing to Democrats to make a big deal about it), while Bob Byrd, an actual officer of the KKK, receives fawning tributes. David Duke is only a nationally-known figure, because he's the most successful Klansman to ever run as a Republican, while the Democrats have no problems nominating Klansmen for the Senate or Supreme Court. Jack Ryan was driven out of the race that put Obama on the national political scene based on unsubstantiated allegations that even if true amount to no more than propositioning his wife for sex, but it's okay for Bill Clinton to suborn perjury, because the topic of said perjury is his private, if extramarital, sex life, while pretending the actual rape accusations against him are not a thing.
You are exactly whom Orwell had in mind with "Two legs bad, four legs good."
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*