Remember, Republicans wouldn’t even give President Barack Obama’s nominee a hearing, claiming that because Obama was late in his second term the process should wait, leaving a court seat vacant for more than a year, to let voters weigh in. Now they’re trying to ram Kavanaugh through in a matter of weeks, despite incomplete vetting of his legal record and major questions about his personal history.
Why the rush? Because there’s a chance the G.O.P. will lose the Senate soon.
Krugman’s column is not, as you might suppose, concerned primarily with the now-disordered state of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court; it’s about, rather, the consistent bad faith exhibited by the Republican Party, and it’s worth reading.
I’ll add an aside concerning Kavanaugh and demographics, however: Much of the commentary concerning this event remarks upon the likely effect of these allegations upon college-educated white women. Why?
Are non-college-educated women, and minority women, indifferent to sexual assault? Is it a commonplace that they are simply expected to endure? Why is there a widespread expectation that their votes won’t be influenced?