Any wonder why Ford feared coming forward?
WASHINGTON >> The moment in Donald Trump’s campaign when he issued a list of potential Supreme Court nominees prescreened by conservative ideologues guaranteed the extreme politicization we’re witnessing. Especially important: White evangelical Christians used this promise as a rationale for playing down Trump’s moral shortcomings.
The result is the festival of misdirection and ugliness that now surrounds the effort to secure Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation. The misdirection involves more moderate Republicans pretending Kavanaugh’s ideology is irrelevant when it is, in fact, everything.
The ugliness deepened at the end of last week, and things will get no better now that Christine Blasey Ford has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday about her accusation of sexual assault against Kavanaugh.
Even before her lawyer announced on Sunday afternoon that she’d appear, Republican senators — who briefly made a show of taking her seriously — were admitting there was virtually no chance she’d change their minds. Any wonder why she had doubts about coming forward?
“Unless there’s something more, no, I’m not going to ruin Judge Kavanaugh’s life over this,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, R-S.C., said on “Fox News Sunday,” as if there exists an obligation to confirm a man to a lifetime position on our highest court to avoid bringing “ruin” to his life.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told the conservative Values Voter Summit on Friday that his colleagues would “plow right through it” and put Kavanaugh on the court.
Ed Whelan, the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a friend of Kavanaugh who’s in the thick of the strategizing on his behalf, actually named and posted photographs of one of Kavanaugh’s Georgetown Preparatory School classmates as the possible perpetrator instead.
“I knew them both,” Ford said. “There is zero chance that I would confuse them.”
Whelan apologized Friday for “an appalling and inexcusable mistake.” On Sunday, his organization announced he was taking “a leave of absence.”
Think about it. Kavanaugh’s backers are so eager to seize a Supreme Court majority they’re perfectly ready to make utterly baseless charges against an innocent person who had nothing to do with any of this. It’s now essential to learn what Kavanaugh himself knew about this calumny.
On Friday Trump tweeted “I have no doubt that if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would’ve been immediately filed.”
Yikes! To state the obvious: Most sexual assaults are never reported to authorities.
One clue as to why Trump would escalate his rhetoric came from the evangelical conservatives. “If Republicans were to fail to defend confirm such a decent nominee,” said Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, “it’ll be very difficult to motivate … faith-based and conservative voters in November.”
Sunday night The New Yorker reported that there was another allegation of sexual misconduct against him, which Kavanaugh called “a smear, plain and simple.”
Between now and Thursday, there’ll be a heavy burden on middle-of-the-road Republicans to make clear that what Ford says will actually matter, as will Kavanaugh’s own believability, especially in light of questions about the veracity of some of his earlier testimony.
They might usefully pressure the committee to call for other witnesses. Republicans can’t keep saying that the truth will never be known while rejecting all efforts to get closer to it.