Sen. Rand Paul says 'we can be respectful and adults' for Biden's Supreme Court nominee confirmation hearings

• Rand Paul says he'd like the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Biden's nominee to be respectful.
• "We can be respectful and adults," he told McClatchy in a new interview.

Sen. Rand Paul said he'd want the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for President Joe Biden's forthcoming nominee to be well-mannered, unlike the divisive battles that took place for former President Donald Trump's nominees.

"I think the main thing that a lot of us would like to see is to show that we can be respectful and adults," the Kentucky Republican told McClatchy in an interview published Thursday.

Particularly, Paul would like to avoid another set of contentious hearings that stoke partisan divisions, as was the case in 2018 during Judge Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination. Sexual assault allegations, which Kavanaugh denied, were at the center of his hearings and garnered nationwide attention.

"The Democrats who did that should be ashamed of themselves and unable to look in the mirror, but I promise you, I will never attack a Democrat nominee for the Supreme Court or for anything else in that kind of terms," Paul told McClatchy.

The GOP senator said his priority will be to understand the judicial philosophy of the president's nominee.

"We may disagree on politics and there's a good chance he's going to pick somebody that has a much different understanding of the Constitution than me and I'll voice my differences on that," Paul told McClatchy.

Other Republicans have also signaled a willingness to keep the temperature down for the upcoming confirmation process. CNN reported last week that Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota spoke with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell about preventing a bitter confirmation fight, and the top Republican agreed.

Biden's nominee will replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal. Whoever Biden places on the court will not alter the court's 6-3 conservative majority, but maintain its current ideological balance. Trump's three Supreme Court appointments, on the other hand, expanded the court's conservative bloc.

Biden has said he will announce his nominee by the end of the month and plans to fulfill his campaign pledge to name the first Black woman to the nation's highest court.

Senate Democrats plan to move quickly to confirm his nominee, which can be done on their own through a simple-majority vote. It's unclear whether any Republicans, such as Paul, will support Biden's nominee and make the vote bipartisan.