As someone remarked on Twitter, Democrats are now trying to turn Judge Brett Kavanaugh into Roy Moore, and it’s disgusting. It’s also predictable and, in fact, was predicted in a prescient email that “a very smart conservative” lawyer sent to Weekly Standard writer John McCormack. On Sept. 5 — eight days before Sen. Dianne Feinstein pulled this stunt — the lawyer warned that Democrats would drop a “grenade” after the Senate confirmation hearings, a repeat of the tactic they used with Anita Hill’s smear of Clarence Thomas. (Hat-tip: Allahpundit.)
This actually surprised me. After the four-day Soros-funded protest carnival of the hearings, I expected the Kavanaugh nomination to proceed rapidly to a Senate vote. Like, OK, Democrats put on their little TV show and now we’re done, right? Certainly I could not believe that such a sober clean-cut, Catholic judge, who has served a dozen years on the bench, would be made the target of this cheap smear:
The allegation dates back to the early nineteen-eighties, when Kavanaugh was a high-school student at Georgetown Preparatory School, in Bethesda, Maryland, and the woman attended a nearby high school. In the letter, the woman alleged that, during an encounter at a party, Kavanaugh held her down, and that he attempted to force himself on her. She claimed in the letter that Kavanaugh and a classmate of his, both of whom had been drinking, turned up music that was playing in the room to conceal the sound of her protests, and that Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand. She was able to free herself. Although the alleged incident took place decades ago and the three individuals involved were minors, the woman said that the memory had been a source of ongoing distress for her, and that she had sought psychological treatment as a result.
This stinks to high heaven and reeks of election-year desperation.
Stripped of dramatic embellishment, what is alleged is that circa 1982, teenage preppie Brett Kavanaugh got to third base with a girl at a party. For his part, Kavanaugh denies this flatly: “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.” And the classmate who was allegedly Kavanaugh’s accomplice likewise denies it: “I have no recollection of that.”
This is an excellent lesson in Anglo-American common law. Among the rights we are guaranteed under the Constitution is to face our accusers in a court of law. We also have a right to a speedy trial. Furthermore, there are statutes of limitations that prevent us from being dragged into court to answer charges involving decades-old incidents where it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find evidence or witnesses by which we might defend ourselves. It would be one thing if a woman went to police and said, “Brett Kavanaugh raped me last night.” In such a case, the time and location of the alleged offense would be clear, and police could examine evidence or question witnesses relevant to the accusation. But how in the world can we expect to obtain knowledge of what happened at a high-school party in 1982? This is almost certainly impossible.
Because we cannot know what happened — there were no charges filed at the time, and it is unlikely Kavanaugh’s accuser could specify what date this incident allegedly occurred, so that at least we could determine his whereabouts on the night in question — it is unfair even to mention it.
Now, I suppose, if a respectable Republican judge had, as a horny prep-school boy in 1982, actually gotten to third base with a girl at a party, we might view that as somehow related to his character. Perhaps you could say he’s a hypocrite, although if every middle-aged man in America were dragged in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and forced to answer for what he did as a horny teenager, the hearings would never end.
Characterizing such a claim as attempted rape? Whoa.
We have traveled far down the road toward a radical feminist dystopia, a nightmare regime of anti-male hatred, if we are willing to destroy the reputation of a federal judge by accusing him of attempted rape in such a case as this. It is a fact of nature — the science is settled — that any teenage boy will go as far as a girl will let him. If it could somehow be proven that Brett Kavanaugh actually did attend a party with this girl, and that he actually did engage in some sexual activity with her that stopped short of actual intercourse, how are we to differentiate between that incident and millions of other similar incidents where teenage boys get to third base without hitting a home run? We are told that Kavanaugh’s anonymous accuser has suffered “ongoing distress” as a result of her memories of this particular night, and has “sought psychological treatment” and . . .? Yeah, she’s crazy.
During the 1990s heyday of Bill Clinton, Democrats employed what came to be known as the “nuts and sluts” defense. Team Clinton was notorious for siccing their private investigators on any woman who came forward to assert that Bill had engaged in improper sexual behavior. The investigators would dig up dirt on the woman and leak it to the media to discredit her as mentally unstable, promiscuous, dishonest, etc.
To quote Clinton strategist James Carville: “Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find.”
Do we really want to go there again? Would it behoove Republicans to employ such Clintonian tactics to discredit Judge Kavanaugh’s anonymous (at least for now) accuser? No, I’m certain nobody in the GOP relishes the thought of a scorched-earth battle on such terrain.
Ace of Spades has a hunch that this nameless woman has psychiatric issues completely unrelated to anything that did or didn’t happen between her and teenage preppy Brett Kavanaugh in 1982, and that the accuser’s dubious credibility explains why Senator Feinstein, who was informed of this accusation in July, waited until after Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing to go public with this sleazy smear.
Senate Democrats should be ashamed of themselves, but if they had any sense of shame, they wouldn’t be Democrats, would they?
