Fred LaSor: Kavanaugh vs. Ford

America’s great morality play filled our TV screens last week as the Senate Judiciary Committee heard Judge Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, tell their respective stories regarding an event Ford alleges occurred more than 30 years ago.

It made for powerful TV: no one could watch Ford without believing she had lived through a horrible experience. Nor could any open-minded person believe, after hearing Kavanaugh, that he had anything to do with Ford’s attack.

But fundamentally, this isn’t about Kavanaugh. And it’s not even about Roe v. Wade, even though that’s how it’s being sold to the Democrat rank and file, particularly women. For elite Democrats, this whole affair is about their continued rejection of the 2016 election results and their ongoing effort to overturn it any way they can. I’ve written about this before: there’s a large part of the Democratic Party who are living in denial, maintaining Trump didn’t win the presidential election. Never in America’s history has a presidential election been followed by years of “resistance,” staffed and funded by the losing party. There’s no doubting the Democrats’ goal.

Democrats continue to talk about the 25th Amendment, about impeachment, and some even mention violent means to overturn the results. And they set themes that are repeated not only by other Democrats, but by newspapers and TV commenters. Just watch whenever a new event triggers outrage on the part of Trump’s critics and you’ll see Democrats in Congress and talking heads on TV using the same terms. The duplication can only be explained by widespread coordination.

But back to the Kavanaugh hearings — does any reader of this column seriously believe Democrats give a flying fig about abused women? If I mention a few names, will you reconsider? Like Mary Jo Kopechne, or Juanita Broaddrick, or Keith Ellison’s former girlfriend Karen Monahan? The good news is, the country listened to Ford without anyone coming forward to accuse her of being trailer trash, as Bill Clinton’s adviser James Carville said about Paula Jones. That’s progress.

Here’s a suggestion: Democrats have spent nearly a week demanding FBI investigations of Kavanaugh. If they truly “believe women,” let’s hear them demand the opening of the files in the congressional office that has been paying off sexual complaints against sitting congressmen. Let them name names and detail the amounts paid. Don’t hold your breath.

Few minds were changed by these hearings: if you started out supporting Kavanaugh, you still support him. If you opposed him going into the hearings, you still do. And the week-long FBI investigation won’t come up with anything new, although I would bet a new accusation or two will surface during the coming week. Sen. Jeff Flake made it clear the FBI investigation he was calling for would be “limited in time and scope.” I’m willing to bet that the end of the week there will be new accusations and Democratic senators will demand Kavanaugh be investigated further. Because the objective is to delay the final vote in the hope it can be delayed beyond the 2018 election, and then have his appointment permanently sidetracked.

Sen. Feinstein’s delay in making the letter from Ford public was the first step, followed by all the demands on the opening day of the hearings to delay it while additional documents could be produced. Delay has always been their tactic, followed in the final days by character assassination. Are we really going to vet Supreme Court justices by scrutinizing their high school yearbook? Only if they’re conservatives.

Fred LaSor retired from the Foreign Service to Minden after nearly 30 years in the Third World.