The Left Has Already Convicted Judge Kavanaugh
If the FBI investigation into the accusations surrounding Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford turns up convincing evidence that the judge lied about what he did at that high school party 36 years ago, or what he did at a dorm room party while a freshman at Yale, Republicans, overwhelmingly, would abandon him. He’d stand no chance of becoming a Supreme Court Justice and there’s every likelihood he’d be impeached and removed from his current job as a Federal Circuit Court judge in Washington.
But if the investigation turns up nothing, if the FBI can’t find even one person to corroborate Professor Ford’s story, or that of the second accuser at Yale, Democrats – every single one on the Senate Judiciary Committee and almost every single one in the entire Senate– will still vote against him.
Their verdict was in before the hearings began. And they found him guilty.
The accusation alone, in the age of #meToo, is enough as far as they’re concerned. We have to believe women when they make allegations of sexual abuse, the feminists say. The presumption of innocence doesn’t apply outside the courtroom, liberals tell us.
When a reporter asked Chuck Schumer, the Democrat leader in the Senate, “Do you agree, then, that he has the, quote, 'presumption of innocence?'" this is how Schumer responded:
"There's no presumption of innocence or guilt when you have a nominee before you," he said. "Find the facts, and then let the Senate and let the American people make their judgment not whether the person's guilty or innocent, but whether the person deserves to have the office." (Emphasis added)
Let that sink in.
It’s not whether the judge is guilty or innocent. But if that doesn’t matter, what does?
Liberals have a long and noble history of defending the rights of the accused, especially when the evidence against them surfaces suspiciously at the 11th hour and is not backed up by witnesses. Except, as it turns out, when the accused is a well off conservative who as a kid went to a preppy Catholic school and hung out at country clubs. Privileged people like that apparently don’t deserve the presumption of innocence. They already got enough breaks in life.
That Ms. Ford doesn’t remember where the alleged attack occurred doesn’t bother her supporters in or out of the Senate. That she doesn’t know how she got to the party or how she got home doesn’t bother them. Why she walked out the front door past her best friend after the supposed attack but never said a word about why she was leaving doesn’t trouble them. That she never told that best friend what happened upstairs at the party is of no consequence to them. That the best friend has no recollection of Brett Kavanaugh or the party doesn’t matter to them. That the accuser at Yale was drunk as a skunk doesn't matter, either.
And in a perverse way, it makes sense: Because this isn’t about whether he actually assaulted her. To Kavanaugh's opponents, that's a mere technicality. It’s about not wanting a conservative on the Supreme Court for a very long time making decisions they won’t like -- and blocking him by any means at their disposal.
Professor Ford says she’s 100 percent sure it was Brett Kavanaugh who attacked her. She came off as credible at the hearing and may be right despite his vehement denials. Unlike a lot of hyper-partisans, I don’t know who’s telling the truth and who’s not.
But if we’ve turned a corner where the accuser, by the mere fact that she’s made an accusation, gets the benefit of the doubt, where an uncorroborated allegation is enough to sink a man’s career and forever taint his reputation, where the presumption of innocence for some people is an idea whose time came and went, then we’re all in trouble.
Liberals, who are constantly reminding us that they’re the enlightened ones, the noble ones who care about fair play, the decent ones who understand the importance of keeping an open mind, have revealed their dark side; they've shown us how easy it is for them to sell out their precious principles in favor of raw politics.
So let’s see what the FBI comes up with. But let’s not pretend that it will matter to the partisans on the left who already have convicted Judge Kavanaugh … and don’t really care if he actually did any of the things he's accused of.