By Patricia Lee Sharpe
Kavanaugh had no complaints about the lack of fair play when his Senate hearings were being accelerated at the speed of light to get him approved before the Republicans lost control of House and Senate.
He had no complaints when Democrats didn’t receive all documents relevant to evaluating his long career.
He didn’t complain when Democrats weren’t given time to digest the documents that were—oh! so reluctantly!—coughed up.
He didn’t complain when his opponent was smeared, as if her family couldn’t be hurt as deeply as his own.
He didn’t complain as the president continued to tip the scales in his favor.
Delving a bit, let’s recall that didn’t mind the gratuitous exhibition of intimate details during the investigation of a Democratic president, an investigation in which he played a major part.
He didn’t.....well, you get the point. So long as his nomination to the Supreme Court was being railroaded at express speed by ideologically sympathetic Senators, he was perfectly happy with a flawed, unfair process.
But then the dirt began to dribble out. One accuser. A second accuser. A supporter suddenly discovering that she’d been smeared in a yearbook by a cabal of future frat boys, whose despicable prep school behavior is gradually seeping out.
So now Brett Kavanaugh wants fair play!!!!
Good. Let’s give him a fair process. Let’s get all those documents on the table and give the Democrats time to study them. Perhaps they’ll show that he can responsibly exercise the duties of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Perhaps they’ll show he’s an ideologue unfit for that honor.
But maybe all that review isn’t necessary. We now know that his character is seriously flawed. Not because he may have been a pig when he was in high school—and college. That could (almost) be excused, if he had, as they say, manned up and confessed to behavior he had, quite understandably, tried to forget.
On the other hand, there are plenty of qualified conservatives who have no need to repress memories of drunken lechery. If the Senators had proceeded with all DELIBERATE speed, they might have uncovered Kavanaugh’s unfitness in time for the President to find a nominee less in his own image. Now they have a problem—and it’s of their own making. They and Kavanaugh banked on a fast, not a fair, process.