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Delay and Humiliate
I’ve had enough.
My husband and I have been on vacation for 10 days, so I’ve not been on Ricochet very much, but it’s hard to ignore the hysteria of the mainstream media and the hand-wringing of the right-leaning media. After reading parts of the letter from Christine Blasey Ford’s attorney Saturday at the last 2:30 pm deadline, I think the path forward for Republicans is obvious.
The comment that sent me over the edge was the disrespectful comment of Ford’s attorney to Senator Chuck Grassley saying that the committee’s responses—
. . . are fundamentally inconsistent with the committee’s promise of a fair, impartial investigation into her allegations.
We are disappointed with the leaks and the bullying that have tainted the process. We are hopeful that we can reach agreement on details.
If it wasn’t clear before this response from the attorney, the goal of humiliating Republicans and delaying the confirmation vote is crystal clear. It’s time for the Republicans to take swift and deliberate action. As I see the situation, they have two choices:
Option #1–They should state there will be no further negotiations. In fact, I’d be pleased to see them say that they should never have begun a negotiation process, given the questionable conditions under which these allegations were made. Ms. Ford is invited to come on Wednesday, which she’d already agreed to do. Her lawyer can interview her and Judge Kavanaugh, and Judge Kavanaugh’s lawyer (I believe she’s a woman) can interview both of them as well. Or the Senate Judiciary Committee can interview her in a private session; those are her choices. Then a vote of the committee will be taken. If this is not acceptable and she doesn’t agree to these conditions, she can renege on her agreement to come. A vote will be taken that day or the next.
Option #2–The Republicans can agree to continue on this path which is designed to last beyond the November elections. No matter how accommodating the Republicans are, the Democrats will condemn them. This option has only a disastrous outcome for Republicans, and the Democrats will take the majority in the mid-terms. Kavanaugh will be dumped and a candidate the Democrats favor for the Supreme Court will be nominated and voted in.
With either #1 or #2, the outcomes may work against the Republicans in the elections. My hope is that the Committee proceeds with Option #1 and that we at least get Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. I’m hopeful there are enough people (including women) who are appalled at the actions of Ms. Ford and the Democrats, and will see through their unconscionable plan and vote for a Republican Senate majority. And I recognize that with Kavanaugh on the bench, the Democrats will continue to investigate him if they win the election. He should be consulted to determine if he’s willing to go through that process.
If nothing else, we will see if the Republicans have a backbone.
Your thoughts?
Published in Politics
Call the vote, whether this mendacious harpy shows up or not. If you’re a Red Stater with a D Senator, write him every day, call him every day, email him every day in support of Kavanaugh. If you have an R Senator, do the same only throw in a suggestion that Feinstein be censured.
One note here: I have to say I have been more pleasantly surprised than not by Rs this time around. We’re into week 2 of this travesty and they aren’t all lying in fetal position whimpering “but, but we’re not misogynists!” .
@dannyalexander, could you enlarge the cartoon or type what it says?
“No, Thursday’s out. How about never? Is never good for you?”
I agree with one exception. There are a few Senators “on our side” who may not vote for Kavanaugh in the affirmative. That puts us in a lose-lose situation. Nonetheless, they are being made a mockery. If they had any honor, they would hold the vote, with or without a hearing for Ms. Ford. Grassley has shown tolerance and patience, yet he is getting nowhere. Win or lose, Wednesday should be the accusers last opportunity to present her case in this venue. If Flake, Collins, and/or Murkowski derail Kavanaugh, there is nothing the Republicans can do. What a shame for Brett Kavanaugh. These accusations that are years old and without any substantive confirmation must be regarded with serious reservation in nearly all cases. Especially one’s involving so deeply our national governance.
Dear Valiuth, if you keep telling me what I should be doing, I just might break loose and tell you what I think you should be doing. Maybe you could express yourself a little differently. Eliminate the “you people” stuff for starters. Other than that, have a nice day at Starbucks or something.
I have the impression that all three will vote for Kananaugh. If Grassley had not made any good faith effort to hear Ford, they’d be a problem. But since Grassley has bent over backwards to try and accommodate her, I think all the so-called “moderates” are on board.
I know that Collins was sympathetic to Ford, but has become more and more irritated at her delaying tactics. Can’t speak to the other two though.
Good piece, Susan. As much as I hate when Trump attacks the media, the way he does, their biases have never been on parade as much as they are now. Most of them might as well call for shooting Republican men. Until now, I have not seen the sentences you quote above. If people are on this woman’s side, it is because the full extent of this nastiness on her people’s part are never shown to us.
And never will be if the MSM/Google/Twitter/Facebook are controlling what information people get.
I still think Kavanaugh will be confirmed by the full Senate (with all 51 Republicans voting for Kavanaugh’s confirmation) by September 30th. If it drags on beyond then, then it might be reasonable to be concerned.
Still, the longer these negotiations about the size of the table at which Ford will appear to provide her testimony about an alleged incident that supposedly took place over 35 years ago, the more foolish the Democrats and their media allies appear.
Deep down, Republican Senators are loving this. The Democrats are basically saying that they believe in 12th century justice. Thus, the GOP wants to milk this for all it’s worth and then finally vote to confirm Kavanaugh anyway.
Am I wrong? We’ll see in about a week.
Another issue here. What sane person moving forward would want to accept a nomination for something like the SCOTUS with the Progressives in full destroy and smear mode? They have made it crystal clear they they will stop at nothing to destroy peoples lives who dare to be conservative.
The GOP can, if it wants to, hold an immediate vote on the Kavanaugh nomination.
But what the GOP can not do is prevent media outlets like the Washington Post from running stories containing accusations about Kavanaugh being a sexual predator.
Imagine this. Let’s say some woman accuses Kavanaugh of molesting her when she was 9 years old when Kavanaugh was 30. The Democrats and their media allies would say, “Believe the children.” So, there is only so much that various strategies and tactics can do to contain the bitterness of these confirmation battles if the Left wants them to make this bitter.
Missing the point. What’s to stop anybody, 10 minutes from now, from making an allegation, and freezing confirmation hearings in its tracks?
Nothing. Which is the whole point. Even if there is no substance to the allegation, the damage is done, the smear is complete. Now, any confirmation hearing will be incomplete without an unverifiable claim of something that will delay the nomination, and taint the nominee, regardless of the outcome.
It’s insane to entertain a hearing for this. Push to civil court, get on with the nomination. Because otherwise it’s just a claim. A decades-old claim, one known to a Democrat, who sat it until it became the most politically opportune moment to use it.
Let’s term limit these catastrophic loads right the [redacted] out of Washington DC, where they are spending the money we earn on themselves and their political futures.
What Grassley is doing is giving the Democrats every opportunity to act like jerks. It’s good politics if the middle of the road, not interested in politics, voters notice and come to the same conclusion we have.
To put another way it’s a good short term strategy. In the long term it’s bad. The Democrats are playing a long game, making it clear to any potential Republican nominee to anything that they are subject to the same kind of examination. It’s to scare poeple off.
So what Grassley is allowing has bad long term consequences.
Not so. The Left’s media and Democrats won’t report the facts because they don’t care about the facts. Whatever she says or doesn’t say, whatever Republicans do or don’t do, will be trimmed and spun into a narrative careless of truth. A Senate hearing is not the only nor the appropriate means of investigation.
This whole spectacle is business as usual. Republicans are letting themselves get rolled by Democrats under a false presumption of honest debate. Republicans are fools to have ever even responded to this nonsense.
The GOP is hopeless.
Mark Geragos is saying on his weekend podcast that Jeff Flake has to capitalize on this to get back at Trump and possibly primary him. I think he says he will vote “present”. It’s fodder for him to fix his political career. The country could want a Trump-hating Republican, I suppose. This may be why Grassley is slowing down when he shouldn’t.
It could be, if behind the scenes, he’s saying he won’t vote “yes” without hearing from Ford and being able to judge her allegations himself. I don’t know if that’s the case, but it could be.
It’s been reported that Flake said that if Ford doesn’t testify, the committee should move forward with the vote. Corker said essentially the same thing.
If Ford really had a compelling case, she and her attorney’s wouldn’t risk a committee vote without her testimony.
Grassley and the Trump administration knows of all the “data” surrounding this case. They are familiar with all of the testimonies by women on the behalf of Kavanaugh dating back decades.
So, they know that they hold all the cards. They just figure that by allowing this accusation to sit in the sunlight for a week or so makes the accusation less compelling to the average voter, not more compelling. This makes their vote to confirm Kavanaugh look more reasonable, not less reasonable. This makes Kavanaugh look as though he has been found innocent, not guilty.
Let’s wait and see if Kavanaugh is on the court by October 1. My guess is that he will be.
So the vote gets delayed? They don’t have to delay indefinetly, and the more she and the dems try to delay as a lack of evidence fails to pile up the more unreasonable they seem. Then you hold the vote, having given her every reasonable avenue to corroborate her case. I don’t see the Committee giving in to any unreasonable demands. They are basically arguing about when she should come in. Monday was too soon. They gave her Thursday.
Me personally if I were in charge of the whole thing I wouldn’t even be that accommodating. I would be subpoenaing everyone her, all the people she names, and everyone that could possibly corroborate her story, and demanding testimony under oath. It could all be done in about a week. Maybe two if in the course of questioning these people new names came forward as potential witnesses. But, if you have to play the political game. I think playing it slow and deliberately is the best way to do it in this case. They have until January of next year to confirm Kavanaugh.
What has he done though that has been problematic though? The Flake hatred on these boards is ridiculous. After she made her allegations he asked that the committee offer her a chance to testify before it. We all seem to agree this is something they should have done. But, the vitriol against him for publicly making this demand has been ridiculous. He was right to make that demand and the committee has been acting very reasonably in trying to accommodate her. There are limits to this accommodation which she is frankly reaching the limits of.
That’s what everyone deserves at this point, and I mean that in both the positive and negative sense.
Or alternatively, Feinstein and Ford are acting in bad faith, so screw them. They are messing with the system too much.
Silence that speaks volumes.
Erick Erickson sums it up in a tweet:
https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/1043696941526405120
This circus just gets better and better.
Question. If you were one of the people Ford named. What would be the smart play. Tell the truth that you knew something about the event or lie, say you did not remember it on the hopes you would be left alone?
We’re all assuming there will be a hearing Thursday, but it look like Ford and her team are still trying to squabble over details:
This is a *S*C *A*M*.
Ever notice that the Democrats pretty much fall in line when told to and the Republicans won’t. It could be that Republicans are more independent by nature or, more likely, the Democrat leadership threatens consequences. It’s too late to drop the hammer on Flake, but Collins and Murkowski should be told that the most important committee they’ll serve on in the future is the one overseeing National Mackerel Commemorative Week if they don’t support Kavanaugh.
I’m pretty sure they have a better system of taking care of politicians that get sacrificed (voted out of office) to take ground, that, face it, they keep. That’s always part of what is going on. Clearly, that’s the way the ACA worked.