Jennifer Rubin makes a good point:
Right-wing male politicians such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) have the audacity to declare that [Dr. Christine Blasey] Ford has been victimized … by Democrats. (Maybe ask her?) Even if you thought that, why would anyone say such a stunningly condescending thing? Telling someone who has said she is the victim of a sexual assault whom she should and should not hold responsible for her pain represents a new low in Senate Republicans’ twisted exercise in blame-shifting.
I don’t know who leaked her identity, so I can’t say whether any Democrats were responsible or not. It’s possible that a Democrat is responsible and that Dr. Ford is angry about it, and I guess it might be interesting to see how she’d answer a question about that possibility.
But one thing should be clearer than anything else in this whole sad, sordid mess. Dr. Ford wrote the letter because she did not want Brett Kavanaugh to be nominated to the Supreme Court. Some people might believe that that was her sole motive. Perhaps she made the whole thing up and her motive was no different from anyone else who doesn’t want to see the Republicans put a conservative on the bench. But she singled out Kavanaugh well in advance of him being selected, and we all know why she says she objected to him in particular.
Assuming that at the very least she earnestly believes that Kavanaugh attacked her (even if, implausibly, it was really his doppelgänger), it should be obvious that the seeing him confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice would the cruelest blow she could possibly receive. That would be victimization on a level that dwarfs the terror of being outed as the author of the letter.
Yet, the Republicans continue to act like they’re concerned for her welfare and to blame the Democrats for causing her to suffer. It’s a sickening, cynical argument.
Almost every Republican in the Senate will vote to confirm Kavanaugh. Perhaps it will be unanimous. And every vote for Kavanaugh is a vote to tell Dr. Ford that either she is not believed or that her experience was just part of a youthful indiscretion on Kavanaugh’s part that ultimately does not matter.
They do not care about her in the slightest.
