Republicans made a late season trade. They’ll take Kavanaugh and give Democrats white women. It may work out on the court but it won’t work out for their party in the long run.
The LA Times has poll that shows the generic Congressional ballot giving Democrats a 14 point advantage. Women support Democrats by 28 points. Every subgroup of women moved toward Democrats including married white women, a group Republicans depend upon for support. If this gap holds, Democrats can expect huge victories across the board in November.
The GOP’s treatment of Christine Blasey Ford is driving a deeper wedge between Republicans and women. Republican senators dismissed her story out of hand and took Kavanaugh’s word without listening to Ford’s complaint. In North Carolina, Senator Richard Burr announced he would vote to support Kavanaugh regardless of what she said before the committee. In other words, she doesn’t matter. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley announced a committee vote on Kavanaugh less than 24 hours after her testimony. In other words, it’s just for show.
After the GOP announced they would hire a woman to question Ford, conservative commentators are all up in arms about the double standard being placed on the Judiciary Committee because all of the Republican members are white men. If they pass the buck to a woman they get criticized and if Ford faces a panel of all white men they get criticized. They’re right and the GOP has nobody to blame but themselves. They’ve managed to alienate every minority group in the country and now they’re alienating white women, too. As the saying goes, you reap what you sow.
Republicans’ insistence that Ford’s accusations are little more than a smear campaign shows their bias. Kavanaugh may or may not have assaulted Ford, but he’s almost certainly a liar. His performance of Fox News showed inconsistencies that indicate either blatant lying or an impaired memory that gives Ford more credibility, not less.
On Fox, Kavanaugh claimed almost choir boy status while his high school yearbook, the fraternity he joined and his choice of friends paint a picture of an entitled party boy. His yearbook is full of claims about his drinking and partying. He joined a fraternity known for partying. His best friend from high school wrote a memoir bragging about the debauchery of their youth.
Republicans like to say there are no corroborating witnesses, but that’s not true. As USA Today notes, Ford told her husband and a therapist back in 2012. She told other friends in 2013, 2016 and 2017, long before Kavanaugh was Trump’s appointee to the Supreme Court. The GOP members of the Judiciary Committee will choose to ignore these witnesses.
The GOP long ago made the political calculation to stop trying to appeal to African-Americans. Under Trump, they’ve decided to give up on Hispanic and recent immigrant voters. Now, they’ve decided it’s okay to alienate women in order to push through a narrow agenda. Good luck in November.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
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