May 9, 2024
May 9, 2024
By The Editorial Board
This is not to pass judgment on whether the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when they were in high school, as she has said. That has yet to be investigated.
Neither is this to suggest that Republican and conservative men are more inclined to behave like entitled pigs than are Democrats and liberals. Abuse of power is nonpartisan. Roughly, for every Blake Farenthold there is a John Conyers Jr.; for every Roger Ailes, a Harvey Weinstein.
But when you look beyond the individual bad actors to the way the political teams are responding to episodes of abuse and harassment in the MeToo era, the contrast is stark. Last year, Al Franken, a Democrat, was run out of the Senate by members of his own conference over behavior that, while stupid and offensive, was bush league compared with the accusations leveled at the Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama. Far from turning against Mr. Moore, who was credibly accused of having molested teenage girls, the Republican establishment stuck by him, smeared his accusers and still funded his campaign — led by none other than President Trump himself.
In July, when Representative Jim Jordan faced multiple accusations of having overlooked the sexual abuse of college wrestlers while he was an assistant coach at Ohio State University, Republican lawmakers rushed not merely to defend their colleague but to tear down his accusers. Mr. Trump’s by now predictable response: “I don’t believe them at all.”
Thus far, the president has remained uncharacteristically restrained in his response to the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh, who he said ”is not a man that deserves this.” But the messages emanating from Mr. Trump’s party — and his family — have been characteristically gross. On Saturday, Donald Trump Jr. took to Instagram to mock the allegations, which were at that time still anonymous. Under the heading “Judge Kavanaughs sexual assault letter found by Dems,” Donald Jr. posted a fake crayon-scrawled mash note: “Hi Cindy will you be my girlfriend [boxes included for checking yes or no] Love Bret.”
Get it? How serious could sexual assault be if it took place among teenagers? Chicks today are so touchy.
Less juvenile but even more insulting were the musings of Chris McDaniel, a Republican candidate for Senate in Mississippi, who in a radio interview on Monday expressed his hope that Americans weren’t “falling for” Dr. Blasey’s accusations, because, “These allegations, 99 percent of the time, are just absolutely fabricated.”
Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican from Utah, suggested, based on nothing more than his faith in Judge Kavanaugh’s honesty, that Dr. Blasey was somehow “mixed up” about the whole attack. (It bears noting that Mr. Hatch also aggressively defended the honor of Rob Porter, the former White House staff secretary whose two ex-wives said he physically abused them.) “I think she’s mistaken,” said Mr. Hatch of Dr. Blasey, before babbling his way around to suggesting that, even if the assault occurred, it didn’t matter that much. “If that was true, I think it would be hard for senators to not consider who the judge is today,” he said.
“That’s the issue. Is this judge a really good man? And he is. And by any measure he is.”
Except that, if Dr. Blasey’s account is true, then Judge Kavanaugh is not “a really good man” because he would have been lying to Congress, the president and the American people.
Mr. Hatch isn’t the only Republican peddling a boys-will-be-boys defense. One anonymous lawyer “close to the White House” went so far as to warnof the dire repercussions of treating Dr. Blasey’s complaint seriously. ”If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried,” he told Politico. “We can all be accused of something.”
It’s hard to tell if this lawyer is suggesting that most men committed sexual assault as teenagers or he sees sexual assault on par with other youthful indiscretions, like breaking curfew. Either way, it is a troubling message.
It is, however, a message that exquisitely promotes the sense of white male victimhood that has become the credo of the Republican Party under Mr. Trump. Nothing burnishes that brand better than pooh-poohing women’s concerns about sexism while promoting the idea that white men are the real victims of discrimination — and of political correctness run amok.
This is second nature to Mr. Trump, who has played his party’s base like Yo-Yo Ma on a Stradivarius. He attacks victims. He dismisses allegations until they prove undeniable — and sometimes even then. The New York Times.
