Long before the assault allegation emerged, the White House sought to inoculate Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh with a strong pro-women stance.<\/b>
\nBrett Kavanaugh and the Trump White House had prepared for a moment like this.
In his opening statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Supreme Court nominee praised his mother as a trailblazing prosecutor. He said he’s grateful for Title IX, the law intended to give women and girls equal access to sports programs that receive federal funds. And he drew attention to the fact that a majority of his law clerks have been women.
Long before Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) referred a letter allegedly detailing a high school sexual assault to the FBI last week, and long before the accuser came forward Sunday just days before a Senate committee vote on the nomination, Kavanaugh and his allies had been working to inoculate him against charges that he might be hostile to women.
Republican veterans of Supreme Court confirmations say Anita Hill\u2019s allegations against Clarence Thomas during his 1991 nomination battle and decades of attacks since then, supercharged by the #MeToo movement over the past year, helped prepare nominees for the charges they might face. Hill, like Kavanaugh\u2019s accuser, had insisted on anonymity when she approached the Judiciary Committee in September 1991, but came forward publicly two days before the Senate was scheduled to vote on his confirmation.
And since Hill\u2019s allegations rocked Thomas\u2019s nomination, Republicans have braced not just for last-minute attacks but, more broadly, for any suggestion they\u2019re anything less than enthusiastic champions of women\u2019s rights.
Chuck Cooper, a top Washington attorney who played a central role in the confirmation battles of William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, likened the Hill allegations to the spate of news reports during the 1990s about high-profile nominees who employed illegal immigrants without paying taxes on them: All future nominees knew that would become an issue in their own nomination.
\u201cSince that moment, everybody with ambitions to public office started paying taxes on their nannies,\u201d said Cooper, who called the 11th-hour charges against Kavanaugh \u201cthe confirmation equivalent of a drive-by shooting.\u201d
If confirmed, Kavanaugh is the potential swing vote on Roe v. Wade, so it was more obvious for him than for other nominees that women\u2019s issues would dominate his confirmation hearings. \u201cThe fact is that nobody listened to any of that stuff from the announcement and said, \u2018Hmm, it\u2019s weird, why are you doing that?\u2019 Everybody understood the political point of it,\u201d said Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor at National Review and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
But the judge was also girding for a last-minute attack. A person close to the Kavanaugh team said before Sunday\u2019s news that it had \u201calmost become a running joke\u201d among the team: \u201cWhat allegation is gonna come up after the confirmation hearing?\u201d
The White House on Sunday stood behind Kavanaugh\u2019s earlier statement that he \u201ccategorically and unequivocally\u201d denied the assault allegation.
\u201cGiven Senator Schumer\u2019s statement the night the nomination was announced, which was that \u2018I will oppose Kavanaugh with everything I\u2019ve got,\u2019 it\u2019s not surprising that the Democrats would attempt an 11th hour delay tactic,\u201d a White House official told POLITICO. \u201cBut it is disturbing that this is the way they\u2019re going about it.\u201d
The latest accusation could shape far more than the Supreme Court nomination. The pivotal midterm election, just seven weeks away, has already been swayed heavily by the #MeToo movement and longstanding accusations against the president. How top GOP lawmakers field the allegations against Kavanaugh could further energize the Democratic base \u2014 much like lawmakers\u2019 treatment of Hill spurred a wave of women to seek office in 1992.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Sunday stuck by Kavanaugh just after the name of the accuser first emerged. A Republican aide to the White House during a recent Supreme Court nomination expected an immediate mobilization of the president himself and close consultation with key senators.
\u201cIt\u2019s likely Trump will weigh in immediately to try to redefine the terms of the debate. It\u2019s likely he will weigh in and accuse her of distorting the facts and attack the Democrats,\u201d this person said. The president has a record of doing just that, and not only against a spate of women who have accused him of sexual harassment. He also went after the women who came forward earlier this year to accuse Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual predation.
The aide emphasized the importance of communication between the White House and a handful of senators who could sway the nomination. \u201cIf I were Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski, I would want to talk to him again and they very well might. He has to make himself available to senators that want to see him again. It just shows transparency.\u201c
«The White House, outside groups, and key Republican allies must stand by his denials,\u201d the former aide said. \u201cAnd while she has some details down, she doesn\u2019t have all the details wrapped up.»
Democrats\u2019 arguments that GOP lawmakers and conservative jurists are hostile to women has become a predictable one. There was the \u201cwar on women\u201d of 2012 that helped Barack Obama recapture the White House. The former president got an assist from tea party candidates like Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Mourdock of Indiana who suggested pregnancy that resulting from rape was, in Mourdock\u2019s words, \u201csomething God intended.\u201d
But Democrats were less successful two years later when the GOP knew what to expect. The party was trounced running on what political pundits dubbed the \u201cWar on Women 2.0.\u201d Incumbent Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) earned the nickname \u201cMark Uterus\u201d for his perceived obsession with women\u2019s issues, with a reporter joking that, if a video were to be made of his campaign, it would be set in a gynecologist’s office.
With the partisan gender gap among voters at a 15-year-high, according to the Pew Research Center, and the added energy of the #MeToo movement, the need to fend off these attacks \u2014 whether warranted or not \u2013- has become increasingly clear to Republican candidates and judicial nominees.
\u201cPut these things together and it\u2019s just obvious that particularly if you\u2019ve got a male nominee to the Supreme Court, you\u2019re gonna have to defend yourself on that flank,\u201d Ponnuru said.
As the potential replacement for outgoing Justice Anthony Kennedy and the potential swing vote on Roe v. Wade, two female Republican senators, Collins of Maine and Murkowski of Alaska, had already said they wanted reassurances Kavanaugh wasn’t set on overturning the 1973 decision that made access to abortion a constitutional right, putting women’s issues at the center of his confirmation battle from the outset.
From the moment Trump announced his nomination in early July, conservatives have worked to portray the judge as an advocate for women. The Judicial Crisis Network, an organization devoted to helping confirm originalist judges, spent millions of dollars on ads featuring former Kavanaugh clerks like Kathryn Cherry: «As a woman and a minority I’m confident that Judge Kavanaugh will be a great justice,» she said.
Within 24 hours of the moment that Feinstein unveiled the anonymous accusation last Thursday, former clerks and old friends had managed to round up 65 women who said they had known him since high school and signed a letter attesting that \u201che has always treated women with decency and respect.\u201d
\u201cThat was true in high school, and it has remained true to this day,\u201d they wrote.
After Kavanaugh\u2019s accuser went public on Sunday, their words fell flat with activists aligned with the Democratic party. Kavanaugh, said NARAL president Ilyse Hogue, «has shown throughout his professional tenure and these hearings a lack of respect for women and our bodily autonomy. The stakes are too high to allow this nomination to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

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