The damage Republicans have done to Americans' understanding of legal terms, criminal investigation, and the types of evidence deemed reliable in sex-crime cases is incalculable. Forget Kavanaugh—millions of sexual assault victims will suffer because of what Republicans did here.
2/ Susan Collins stood up and said that "corroboration" in sex-crime cases requires either eyewitnesses or a confession. She said that the suspects in a sex crime are "witnesses" who must confirm their accuser's account.
Stop and think about what that means for women in America.
Stop and think about what that means for women in America.
3/ Collins stood up and said that certain sexual assault allegations—see Ramirez—can be ignored, presumably because they're not attempted rapes, they're "only" sexual assaults. And then she lied about the content of a sworn and corroborated affidavit (Swetnick) for partisan gain.
4/ Collins and her peers said that not only do uncharged sexual assaults from one's youth not matter—people can change—but that that same forgiveness should be extended to those who never take responsibility for their crimes and lie repeatedly under oath as an adult to hide them.
5/ The Republican Party is endangering women's lives by revamping the nation's understanding of evidence collection and even moral culpability in sexual assault and rape cases. They've mis-educated a nation on violence against women to score a cheap political win. That is *evil*.
6/ Swetnick's sworn affidavit—corroborated by another accuser's sworn affidavit—says Kavanaugh and Judge groped women and spiked drinks at parties where women were taken advantage of. Collins discussed that affidavit like it was *insane*—not the *known* "rape culture" in America.
7/ Collins lied about Swetnick and Accuser #4's sworn affidavits. She said that the women had accused Kavanaugh and Judge of doing what *Judge later confessed to doing* to his girlfriend—having sex with an incapacitated woman. But *neither* Swetnick *nor* Accuser #4 alleged that.
8/ There's no convention of discourse that prevents us from calling Republicans "rape enablers" in this instance—as that's literally what they did. They called sexual assault suspects mere "witnesses"; lied about sworn affidavits; lied about evidence; and demanded no contrition.
9/ Moreover, they advanced specious—and misogynistic—defenses to sexual assault, saying that sex crimes in one's youth shouldn't matter when one is an adult *even if one never takes responsibility for one's actions and one lies repeatedly under oath before Congress to hide them*.
10/ The facts here gave Republicans *every possible chance* to do the honorable thing: ask Trump to nominate another conservative—perhaps one like Gorsuch, who just *months earlier* sailed through to confirmation despite GOP claims now that the Democrats would "never" allow that.
11/ Republicans could've withheld their votes on Kavanaugh because he never acknowledged culpability for his past acts; because he perjured himself; because he demonstrated a lack of temperament; because he bared partisan ambitions and threatened Democrats. But no, *all* ignored.
12/ One reason I'm so angry is I'm in many respects a *moderate Democrat*. I *want* to believe in compromise, a strong two-party system, both sides' basic good faith. But GOP malfeasance has made it impossible to see the GOP right now as anything other than an instrument of evil.
13/ I don't know what happened. I don't think Collins is "evil," or Flake is "evil," or that most GOP senators are—but I think they allowed themselves to become agency-less instruments of men that history *will* deem evil (as we do Benedict Arnold), including Trump and McConnell.
14/ Why do we pretend history doesn't deem certain men to have perpetrated so much evil that we see them—in totality—as villains? Consider George Wallace, or Nathan Bedford Forrest, or Charles Lindbergh. Can it be doubted that Trump and McConnell are causing as much or more harm?
15/ There was a path of bipartisanship here: to have allowed Merrick Garland on the court because Obama nominated him *months* before any "Biden Rule" (not a rule, by the way) would've come into effect. Then Gorsuch could've gotten Kennedy's seat. It *didn't have to go this way*.
16/ Republican leaders declared war on our traditions and institutions—and in so doing placed themselves on the wrong side of history's "heroes-and-villains" line. This *isn't* about GOP presidents not getting conservative Justices—they *do*. This is about honoring US traditions.
17/ Democrats would've—of course—allowed votes on conservative Justices nominated by a Republican president had not McConnell stolen a Supreme Court seat and then allowed Trump to nominate a man who committed crimes—*crimes*—on national television in trying to hide his past ones.
18/ Instead, right-wing media paints the Democratic position as an *insane* one I don't even recognize—one that, unlike what I've discussed here, there's no evidence to substantiate. So no, this isn't a "both sides" issue—one of our great parties has gone *totally off the rails*.
19/ I don't know the right prescription here. I *certainly* know it *doesn't* involve violence of any kind. But if you ask whether Democrats should set as a transparent goal legally, peacefully and through voting removing the GOP from any political authority for a generation—yes.
20/ The Republican Party has shown itself capable of—and *interested in*—destroying American democracy, norms, and spirit in the interest of accruing power. An organization with that ambition should be no part of American public life until it has redefined itself completely. /end
