First, during a wide-ranging interview with Louisville’s Courier-Journal, McGrath said that while she found Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who alleged Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school, credible, she still probably would have voted to confirm Kavanaugh. — www.washingtonpost.com/...
This makes no sense. Why would you confirm someone to a lifetime appointment onto the highest court in the land, if you believed there was a credible allegation of sexual assault? If you believe the allegation credible, then the nominee’s denials have to be considered lying under oath.
Not only is this position nonsensical, it closely matches the word-salad spewed by Republicans, including Susan Collins, who sought to justify placing a man who clearly lied at his confirmation hearings onto the court. Unsurprisingly, the whole ruse was cooked up by a friend of Kavanaugh’s to offer plausible deniability:
As Matt Berman points out, this represents a strange triumph for Ed Whelan, the conservative legal scholar and friend of Kavanaugh’s. Shortly after Ford’s allegation became public, Whelan delivered a convoluted, elaborate theory in which he argued that another man—whom he identified, despite no evidence—had attempted to rape Ford, and that Kavanaugh was innocent. Whelan’s theory was immediately and rightly pilloried as both a slander on the other man and as baseless speculation.
Yet Whelan’s theory took deep root, in slightly altered form. Laundered of the spurious accusation, the unidentified alternative culprit became a staple of Republican rhetoric. Unwilling to be seen as outright rejecting Ford’s testimony, which was broadly deemed credible, or as unconcerned about sexual misconduct in general, Republican senators instead coalesced around a theory that had even less evidence to support it than Ford’s account—Ford, after all, had her own testimony, and Kavanaugh’s calendar suggested he could have attended a gathering with the very men Ford placed on the scene. There is no evidence at all for the alternative culprit. — www.theatlantic.com/...
Why would McGrath echo a Republican talking point?
McGrath seems to have had a change of heart within a few hours:
But hours later, McGrath, who announced this week her bid to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said she had changed her mind and actually would not have supported him.
“I was asked earlier today about Judge Brett Kavanaugh and I answered based upon his qualifications to be on the Supreme Court,” McGrath tweeted. “But upon further reflection and further understanding of his record, I would have voted no.” — www.washingtonpost.com/...
Support for Kavanaugh isn’t the only strange thing McGrath said in her interview yesterday, she also seemed to campaigning alongside Trump and suggesting she would be more helpful at advancing his priorities than McConnell has been:
"If you think about why Kentuckians voted for Trump, they wanted to drain the swamp, and Trump said that he was going to do that," McGrath said during the announcement of her candidacy on MSNBC's Morning Joe. "Trump promised to bring back jobs. He promised to lower drug prices for so many Kentuckians. And that is very important." [...]
“McConnell,” she said, “has prevented President Donald Trump from accomplishing much of his agenda during his first two and a half years in office.“ — www.courier-journal.com/...
McGrath has garnered virtually all the news, based on support from Senate leadership who believe a center/right-wing candidate is needed to win in Kentucky. But there’s another Democrat running for McConnell’s senate seat. and it may be worth taking a look at his positions as a contrast: Steven Cox’s campaign website is here.
— @subirgrewal