Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had no problem believing adult women who said they were sexually assaulted as students decades ago.
Until recently, that is.
Back in November 2017, McConnell called for Roy Moore to step aside after a number of women came forward and accused the Republican Senate candidate of trying to have sex with them when they were teenagers.
There was no extensive public hearing and no FBI investigation, yet McConnell found the women’s claims credible, and rightly so. Other Republican lawmakers also came out against Moore, or at least said the Alabama judge should get out of the race if the allegations were true. That list included Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., who told ABC News that “I believe the women who have come forward” and that “Roy Moore should do what is best for the conservatives of Alabama and step aside.”
But that was then.
Now, with two women having accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting them in their teenage years, McConnell and the GOP leadership in Washington are treating their claims entirely differently — as completely fabricated.
McConnell called the accusations a “smear campaign, pure and simple,” by liberal lawmakers who had indicated “they would throw all the mud they could manufacture” at Kavanaugh.
“It’s not like they didn’t warn us,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “But even by the far left’s standards, this shameful — shameful — smear campaign has hit a new low.”
McConnell went on to voice the same arguments that Moore and his supporters used back in November 2016 against his accusers, including that the claims were uncorroborated and unsubstantiated, lacked details, were decades old and were brought up only at a politically opportune moment. He’s offered no “if true” qualifier, suggesting he believes the allegations were entirely made up.
Yet these are credible allegations. They’ve come up partly because reporters got wind of an email discussion several months ago among a group of Kavanaugh’s former classmates discussing his treatment of women and alcohol abuse as a younger man. Furthermore, we now have Kavanaugh’s Yale roommate saying he was quiet when sober, but was incoherent and belligerent when drunk — and was drunk quite frequently.
So what’s the difference between the Kavanaugh and Moore situations?
McConnell’s political self-interests, that’s what.
With Moore, the Senate majority leader was hoping to freeze out a Trumpian extremist who threatened to tip the power balance in the chamber away from the establishment politicians whom McConnell controls.
McConnell at that point was also battling President Donald Trump himself, with McConnell on the defensive from attacks by Trump for failures on the repeal of Obamacare and other key initiatives.
But McConnell’s situation has firmed up since then, and now he’s completely changed his tune.
So much for having any respect for women, for due process or basic fairness. But McConnell scored huge points for hypocrisy by guaranteeing a vote on Kavanaugh as opposed to ordering a full FBI investigation and getting to the bottom of the allegations.
Heller was even more disgusting, calling the initial accusation against Kavanaugh “a little hiccup” on the judge’s way to confirmation. Then his Senate office released a statement saying Heller hadn’t said what he’d said.
“No, I do not believe sexual assault allegations of any kind are a hiccup; I was referring to how poorly the Democrats have handled this process and the fact that the Democrats have not worked with the Judiciary Committee chairman in good faith,” the statement read.
The statement said Heller believed Christine Blasey Ford should have a chance to share her story with the Judiciary Committee, but Heller’s walkback was hardly convincing. Like McConnell and others, Heller seems to want the Senate to steamroll the allegations and confirm Kavanaugh before the November midterms.
In response to Heller’s “hiccup” comment, the spokeswoman for his opponent, Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., commented that “Nevada women are listening.”
Quite true. So is any Nevada man with a grain of respect for women.
Keep in mind that no one raised such claims against Neil Gorsuch after he was nominated to the court by Trump. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, no such accusations existed against Gorsuch. But the GOP has selected yet again a person who clearly believes women don’t have nor deserve the same rights as men, and has treated them as such. Kavanaugh’s character is revealed here, and with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court at stake, Americans have a right to demand the highest character irrespective of the political and judicial leanings of a nominee.
Then there were the obvious untruths that Kavanaugh uncorked during his recent hearings, including that he was not involved in handling the judicial nomination of anti-abortion judge William Pryor, and knew nothing about torture or the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping when addressing the Judiciary Committee for his current position on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Both of those lies have been debunked by emails.
The lies and allegations are disqualifying character issues for Kavanaugh. It’s not a matter of how he’ll rule as a judge, it’s a matter of demanding the most — not the least — from the character of our Supreme Court justices.
Meanwhile, Democrats were behind the resignation of liberal appeals court judge Alex Kozinski this past December after sexual-misconduct allegations began to surface, and the same was true of Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn. So they’re not being hypocritical here, but instead have shown some spine and are prepared to make difficult choices.
On the other hand, Trump’s Republican Party, abetted by the likes of Heller, is meeting sexual abuse with a shrug and a smile when it’s convenient for them.