Rep. Kevin Cramer, the Republican nominee for Senate in North Dakota, is not sure it would be a problem to put an attempted rapist on the Supreme Court. Sure, he told an interviewer, “it’s tragic, it’s unfortunate, it’s terrible” if Brett Kavanaugh pinned Christine Blasey Ford to a bed, covered her mouth so she couldn’t scream, and tried to tear her clothes off. But “even if it’s all true, does it disqualify him? It certainly means that he did something really bad 36 years ago, but does it disqualify him from the Supreme Court?”
1.) Yes. Does it disqualify him from leading a productive life in any way? No. But we’re not talking about that. We're talking about one of only nine jobs on the most powerful court in the nation. It’s not like everyone who doesn’t get to be on the Supreme Court has been ruined for life.
2.) If it’s “all true,” then Kavanaugh has been lying about his history of sexual assault. Wouldn’t that be disqualifying? Cramer allowed as how that’s true, that if “it’s found that he knew, that he recalls it, he knew it happened, and lies about it, then I think that would disqualify him.” But if he did it and he doesn’t recall that, then he lied on Fox News about never having been blackout drunk. (Also. Kavanaugh already lied repeatedly about several other things under oath at his first hearing and Republicans didn’t think that was disqualifying.)
Cramer also kinda sorta clarified his earlier remarks that “nothing evidently happened” because “it was supposedly an attempt or something that never went anywhere,” after interviewer Chris Berg prodded him that “I think most people would say something definitely happened.”
“Right. That, I get,” replied Cramer. “My point was is that there was no type of intercourse or anything like that. That was my point, that nothing happened in terms of a sexual, um, event, beyond, obviously, the attack.”
That’s why it’s attempted rape, genius. Is this yet another double bind for women on rape—that if you don’t fight off an attacker, everyone asks why you didn’t fight harder, and if you do fight off an attacker, then “nothing happened” so why does it matter?
It cannot be repeated often enough that Kevin Cramer, the man both suggesting that attempted rape (and lying about it) doesn’t disqualify someone from the Supreme Court and that attempted rape doesn’t matter because it’s not rape, is both an elected member of the United States House of Representatives and a top Republican recruit to run for Senate in 2018. This is the Republican Party.
We have to fight tooth and nail to keep this party from continuing to control the Senate. Can you give $3 to elect Democrats in Nevada and Texas?