The headline pretty much says it all: "For female Republicans, party loyalty trumps #MeToo." But the article, in Politico, offers up the details. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst said “I trust Senator Grassley” as an explanation for why she wasn’t watching Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony on Thursday … but Ernst showed up for Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony.
“I have been a supporter of the MeToo movement,” Ernst told Iowa reporters on a conference call that day. “But these are very difficult situations that happen…. And sometimes they can’t be corroborated.”
And sometimes, Republicans get in the way of an investigation that might provide corroboration and refuse to notice lies and evasions by a powerful man. What a slogan Ernst is offering up, though: Where other women say “believe women,” Ernst says “trust Chuck Grassley.”
She’s not alone.
“I believe Judge Kavanaugh when he says these humiliating events never happened,” recently appointed Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) said in her first floor speech on Wednesday. She later tweeted that it was “my duty… as the first woman to represent” Mississippi to defend Kavanaugh.
Sounds like she’s worried about Kavanaugh’s humiliation at having his past revealed, but not about Ford’s trauma, doesn’t it? And her “duty … as the first woman to represent” Mississippi? Like the good wife standing by her man no matter what? White male power is everything and Republican women exist not to challenge it but to uphold it.
In one more indictment of the Republican Party and its mockery of the media’s idea that moderate Republicans are really a thing, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins remain overwhelmingly likely to put party above the idea that a man should not be confirmed to the Supreme Court after definitely lying repeatedly and almost certainly assaulting one or more women. It’s 2018 in action yet again.
Let's make 2019 better. Can you give $3 to elect Jacky Rosen in Nevada and Beto O'Rourke in Texas?
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