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| President Trump standing by Brett Kavanugh Photo: Mother Jones |
There have been some flawed
nominations for the United States Supreme Court in the past, but the current
one, Brett Kavanaugh, is one for the books.
In what is projected to be pure theatre should the scheduled sham
hearing take place on Thursday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the lead-up
will have your heart pounding and head spinning.
Now, not only one allegation of
sexual misconduct—attempted rape to be precise—in which Judge Kavanaugh has
been accused while in prep school, another just surfaced last night whereby he
allegedly pushed his genitals into a face of another woman while at Yale. The accuser in the latter case, Deborah
Ramirez, admitted memory lapses from a drunken stupor but believes the incident
did occur.
While Senate Leader Mitch
McConnell and Chairman Charles Grassley intend to “plow through” this “hiccup”
in the confirmation process regardless of the testimony from Dr. Christine Blasey
Ford, this second allegation adds a new wrinkle. Such accusations would ordinarily
be troublesome, and in normal times with a normal Republican president, the
nomination would be pulled with a new right wing, anti-minority, anti-choice
candidate would be brought up.
Not this time, at least not yet.
President Donald Trump is steadfastly standing by his man. There are three
primary reasons for this stubborn, if not politically fatal, position:
1. Trump knows the hearing will be a sham and
regardless of what Dr. Ford has to say, the Republican majority on the
committee will vote yes in pure rubber-stamp fashion and refer the confirmation
to the full Senate.
2. By pulling the nominee from consideration,
Trump would be forced into admitting—whether or not he actually says so, and he
won’t—that he made a mistake. More
likely, he will blame the Democrats, the “deep state,” the media, President
Obama, Hillary Clinton, James Comey, the NFL and all his myriad enemies for this
smear campaign against this “fantastic man."
3.
Most importantly,
Trump wants Kavanaugh on the bench because of the judge’s previous declarations about strong executive power and that sitting presidents be shielded from criminal prosecution and civil
lawsuits while in office. In other words, Kavanaugh would protect him where his
Attorney General Jeff Sessions would not.
The hearing should it occur will be a disgrace as well as a sham in that an FBI investigation will not have taken place prior
to the proceedings and other witnesses will not have been subpoenaed. It is
clear the president as well as the servile Republicans on the committee don’t
want to get to the bottom of the allegations and learn the truth for the three
reasons cited above.
The losers in all this besides
the Republican brand heading into the midterms just six weeks away are all the
victims of sexual assault and misconduct who again will be doubted and
disparaged, and it explains why these people are reluctant to report such
incidents in a timely manner. Trump loses, too, because it reminds folks that he has been subject to some 17 accusations of sexual misconduct.
Thank you Randy Rainbow:
Thank you Randy Rainbow:
— Randy Rainbow (@RandyRainbow) September 24, 2018
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