Various bloggers and talking heads today were going over Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee concerning Brett Kavanaugh in his youth, and most agreed that it would have been very hard for Judge Kavanaugh to make a case against her argument that he molested her 35 years ago. So what he did was, rather than describe the event as a “high-tech lynching”, Kavanaugh specifically blamed the Democratic Party, whom he claimed to be seeking “revenge on behalf of the Clintons“, cried, yelled, and argued with Democrats on the floor.
I mean, Gadzooks, I didn’t think it was possible for a public figure to be more self-pitying and unhinged than Donald Trump was yesterday. But I was wrong.
To those “conservatives” who still have intellectual qualms about Donald Trump’s temperament: Brett Kavanaugh would be Trump’s mentality with a lifetime appointment and a three-digit IQ.
What really gets me is how it goes to show how Donald Trump degrades everything and everyone he touches. This was best demonstrated by South Carolina Senator and Trump golfing pal Lindsay Graham, who if anything was even more incensed in committee than Kavanaugh was. Outside, he told reporters during a break, “To my Republican colleagues: If you can ignore everything in this record, looking at an allegation that’s 35 years old, that’s uncertain in time, place, date, and no corroboration. If that’s enough for you, god help us all as Republicans, because this happens to us, it never happens to them.
“But let me tell my Democratic friends: If this is the new norm, you’d better watch out for your nominees.”
Well, given how much raw hatred has been exposed on both sides (but especially the Republican) today, I find it hard to see how Republicans could escalate further if the shoe were on the other foot. I mean the only way to be more obstructionist and disrespectful would be to not let a Democratic president get his nominee to a committee interview at all. Hypothetically.
But with regard to the he-said-she-said: if all we have is Ford’s emotional testimony with no corroboration, no witnesses and no evidence, then it begs the question of why Republicans wouldn’t allow other witnesses to be heard. Yes, I know it’s the president who has to request an FBI investigation. But if somebody is lying, you would think Donald “Obama Spied On Me At Trump Tower!!” Trump would want to expose such perfidy. Yes, as Chuck Grassley and at least one other Republican said – repeatedly – an FBI investigation does not draw conclusions. The purpose of an investigation is not for the investigators to draw conclusions. The point is to establish facts. The facts will speak for themselves. That will lead to conclusions. The fact that Kavanaugh and his supporters in the Republican Party do not want an investigation that could tear down Ford’s case indicates that they actually want this to be left as he-said-she-said, so that they can muddy the waters. Because if they would rather leave Ford’s reputation up in the air than make a definite case, it indicates that Trump, Grassley and the rest don’t want an investigation because they suspect what might turn up.
And yet on the various conservative sites, the people who don’t want to establish a case of evidence are the ones going “WE’RE the rational and sober analysts and THEY’RE the hysterical conspirators. Also, crying is blackmail.” Basically you’re pitting Asperger’s Syndrome up against emotional intelligence, and that never plays well on camera. Except on The Big Bang Theory, where it’s played for laughs.
Of course, from the feedback I’m getting, it doesn’t matter. All the “conservatives” are cheering Kavanaugh’s defiance, and saying that they wouldn’t want to be the Republican who stops her nomination. Like maybe Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who already survived getting primaried to win re-election off the party ticket. Or retiring Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, who has nothing left to lose. But then, Jeff Flake is the most aptly named public figure since Andy Dick.
Various reports (and Trump’s own tweets) confirm that this performance was exactly why he selected Kavanaugh in the first place. Of course, there’s a difference between fighting, and fighting in just the way Trump would. I say again: Brett Kavanaugh was not on the Heritage Foundation’s initial list of nominees to the president. Kavanaugh did not address the matter of whether US v Nixon was rightly decided. Everything he has done was nakedly in anticipation of how Trump would react, and that included both his facile denials prior to this point and his open emotionalism today.
Heck, in my most cynical moments, I think that Kavanaugh (after his drinking days) did become the devout Catholic father he is presented to be, and is only allowing these charges to build up around him because he knows Trump would sympathize with him as a fellow molestor.
Kavanaugh today confirmed that he is a first-class political operator and open power-luster, and such a mentality should be allowed nowhere near the Supreme Court. I am saying this as a politically incorrect, middle-aged white male who did not vote for Hillary Clinton, is not an illegal alien and does not have a uterus.