“This woman, whoever she is, is mixed up.”
Dick Polman at the Atlantic collects some of the ways Republicans are displaying their settled, instinctive indifference (or outright hostility) to women:
After Christine Blasey Ford, a clinical-psychology professor, put her name to the accusation, announcing publicly that she’d passed a polygraph and had shared her story in a 2012 therapy session, Senator Orrin Hatch, a longtime member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s all-male Republican contingent, told the cameras: “This woman, whoever she is, is mixed up.” He also said that even if the assault accusation were true, the past wouldn’t matter so much: “It would be hard for senators not to consider who he is today.”
His Republican colleague Bob Corker voiced sympathy for Kavanaugh, but none for his accuser: “I mean, I can’t imagine the horror of being accused of something like this.” Donald Trump Jr. joked on Instagram that Kavanaugh had merely had a schoolyard crush. And an unnamed lawyer close to the White House said that the alpha gender is under assault: “If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried.”
It’s all about him, and she is either irrelevant or a lying monster.
In a sense that’s inevitable, since he’s the one up for the Supreme Court seat…but in a more important sense it’s not, because if he can’t get to that seat except via all these manly dismissals of his alleged assault on a younger female person…then why are they so hell-bent? Why doesn’t this matter to them? Why hasn’t it put them off him? Self-evidently they don’t care about it enough to slow down the process, so that means they don’t care about it any significant amount at all. Senate to women: you don’t matter. We knew that, but it’s galling to watch it played out so publicly and emphatically by the people who govern us.
Now, the exodus of women to the Democratic Party appears to be accelerating, and for a more profound cultural reason than policy differences: the belief that Trump and his male allies refuse to fully see them as equal human beings. Trump lost the female electorate by 12 percentage points (although he won among white women). Meanwhile, a solid majority of men clearly didn’t care much that Trump had allegedly abused, harassed, or groped almost 20 women, or that Trump responded by calling the women liars and threatening to sue them. The president was similarly hostile last winter to the multiple women who came forward to accuse the Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore of molesting them as minors.
Yet they apparently can’t stop themselves displaying their contempt for women as if it were normal and only to be expected.
The GOP knows that it will always be able to hold on to a substantial minority of women voters. After all, there will always be women who aspire to being Commander’s Wives or Aunts in Gilead.
And women who want to end access to abortion, and disagree with equal rights for women – usually because of Christianity
He must think saying “mixed up” is somehow more polite than “lying.” So what is she mixed up about? Is she accusing the wrong “Brett Kavanagh?” Is he saying she got some details (that he knows, but she doesn’t) wrong? Kavanagh’s right because penis? I guess as long as Republicans feel compelled to slap shitty wallpaper on their naked ambition to ack the court, we’re going to get bullshit responses like this.
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Why do I find it a stretch to believe that he would ever say the same thing about a Democratic nominee for SCOTUS?
YNNB – if it were a Democratic nominee, a ticket for jaywalking when (s)he was 12 would be enough to prove they were unfit.
@Iknklast #4 – yup, that would be a “they’re no angel” disqualification.
Gah – the double standard how rethuglicans try so hard to excuse their own as “boys will be boys” and “locker room talk”, but eviscerate anyone else as “no angel” or “confused” or “brought it on themselves”! It just highlights how little lip service they pay to notions of equality, or fairness.
It’s politically stupid… Why alienate a demographic that exists absolutely everywhere? Even female Trump cultists are souring on him.
Counting on a minority of women voting for you is just risky and dumb…
They are so used to not noticing women (except when they want to leer and grab) that they simply don’t think women matter. They think that in the end men will make all the decisions that count.
not Bruce, #3; I read ‘mixed up’ not as lying but as ‘she’s a nutjob’.
Whoever she is, she can’t be right in the head. What kind of person thinks people will believe that such a good man would do such a thing? Why, a crazy bitch, that’s who. It doesn’t matter that it might be true, she’s still crazy to think that the people who can punish him give a shit anyway.
@iknklast:
Well they best get on disenfranchising women then… Otherwise they’re screwed long term (I know Republicans are incapable of looking more than two years ahead).
The Republicans successfully pulled off a strategy of stacking Congress by gerrymandering the states. That was quite a long term plan. Although right now they do seem intent on hanging onto immediate power.
https://www.salon.com/2018/02/06/how-the-republicans-rigged-congress-and-poisoned-our-politics/
So the latest is that Ed Whelan, a prominent conservative lawyer, spent the last couple days claiming that he’s come into possession of some evidence exonerating Kavanaugh. This was apparently an attempt to get some news outlet to bite on his “scoop,” but they must have all declined (probably on the advice of their attorneys), and Whelan decided to post it himself on Twitter.
Basically, he’s posting some Google Maps screenshots and floor plans and yearbook photos to claim that Dr. Ford must have mistaken one of Kavanaugh’s classmates for him. (He names the classmate, but I won’t.) It’s all highly speculative at best, leaning heavily on how you interpret Ford’s comment that the house party was “close” to a certain country club, and on Whelan’s claims that the floor plans of the classmate’s house (and I have no idea where he got those) supposedly “match” her description (though honestly, how many upper-class homes have a staircase that leads up to a bathroom and at least one bedroom? 90%?).
Even most conservatives on Twitter are backing away. This seems like a spectacular own goal. I had reserved a small chance that maybe Whelan actually had some real evidence, so it’s a relief to see he’s got nothing. Meanwhile, he’s demonstrated his own hypocrisy on the supposed evils of making accusations, and, if conservatives attempt to rely on this argument at all, he’s just provided yet another reason why Kavanaugh’s friend Judge needs to be subpoenaed to testify, as even in Whelan’s version Judge was still present.
Yep. One thing Twitter is useful for is following Ari Berman’s reporting on this.