For The GOP, It’s All About Optics

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WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 05: Senate Judiciary Committee member Orrin Hatch (R-UT) (L) and Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) listen to testimony by Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh during the second day of his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill September 5, 2018 in Washington, DC. Kavanaugh was nominated by President Donald Trump to fill the vacancy on the court left by retiring Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

We’re hearing the word “optics” a lot these days.  It comes in the context bad optics for the GOP, as in older white Senators questioning a victim of sexual assault, on national television, less than two months from midterm elections, where polls show the GOP potentially losing its majority due to its standard bearer’s treatment of women.  Really Bad Optics.  Which is why the GOP would be happy if all this went away, now.  So when Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyer emailed the committee and tentatively agreed for her client to testify next week, it was the last thing Senate Republicans wanted to hear.

From The New York Times:

“The Blasey email appeared to put Republicans — who on Wednesday were accusing Dr. Blasey of backing out and calling her sincerity into question — back on the defensive. Republicans are aware that they can ill afford to look as if they are railroading a sexual assault survivor. If they stick to their position that Dr. Blasey can testify on Monday or not at all, they risk looking like bullies — just weeks before midterm elections when their party is already expected to suffer from a backlash from women.”

So what to do?  The all white male Republican majority on the committee had the idea to hire an outside counsel, who is female, to question Christine Blasey Ford.

The idea is to not repeat what happened 28 years ago.  Four of the GOP Senators who voted to confirm Clarence Thomas back in 1991 are still there!  Two of them, Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley, are still on the Judiciary Committee.  Mitch McConnell was around back in 1991 too, as was Richard Shelby, who was a Democrat at the time.  From Time:

Experts argue that Republicans risk another parallel to the Thomas hearings: The backlash among women voters that followed in the next congressional elections, which led to 1992 being dubbed the “Year of the Woman.” Since then, the number of women in the Senate and the House has more than doubled.

Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said that Republicans may be emboldening the Me Too movement against sexual harassment and assault regardless of how they vote.

“I think that no matter the outcome, if he is not confirmed and it’s because of this, or if he is confirmed in spite of this, it will energize this movement that’s out there even more,” she said.

Which is perhaps why we hear the Senate Majority Leader talking like this:

The Judiciary Committee has just proposed next Wednesday for the hearing.  Dr. Ford is reportedly talking to the FBI in San Francisco later today.  More as it develops.