While Donald Trump hasn’t been able to resist attacking Christine Blasey Ford and a number of senators took at least a few steps down the road to the disastrously awful “doppelgänger” road, Republicans have now settled on the strategy they will use to defend Brett Kavanaugh against both Ford and other women who come forward. As Axios reports, Republicans intend to focus on details of time and events to show that, more than three decades later, the “foggy memories” of those accusing Kavanaugh don’t get everything right. And if they don’t get everything … how can they be sure about anything?
It’s a tried and true technique in courtrooms, where defense attorneys have leveraged doubt over the color of a shirt or the make of a car to convince juries that a witness is less than reliable. There are enough details in the statement from Dr. Ford—location, actions, sequence of events—to allow Republicans to introduce doubt about some aspect of the story. They can then attempt to leverage that doubt through emphasis and repetition to make a shrug-of-the-shoulders appeal to the only jury that counts: The one watching on TV.
While they’re using this argument by highly selective reading to pick at Dr. Ford’s statement Republicans, for the moment at least, feel more empowered to be more direct in attacking the Yale incident involving Kavanaugh exposing himself to classmate Deborah Ramirez. Since the initial article included statements from people associated with both Kavanaugh and Ramirez who didn’t recall anything similar, Republicans will simply attack Ramirez’s recollection as a whole; arguing that time (and alcohol) make her entire story too suspect to be believed.
Without allowing any other witnesses to actually appear in the Kavanaugh hearings, Republicans may even feel like the accusations concerning Kavanaugh’s assault on Ramirez and the still unknown third woman involved with attorney Michael Avenatti could help them. They might easily ask Ford about her knowledge of these incidents, fully expecting that she will say she knows nothing about them, simply to give Republican senators a chance to attack the women involved in absentia, and to make it seem that their reports are less reliable.
Pick on details for the woman who is present. Attack in whole the stories of those who are not. That’s the Republican strategy for the moment. But at the rate things have been moving, Thursday is a long way away. There is every chance that between then or now more information from Avenatti, more women stepping forward, or Donald Trump getting his hands on his phone unsupervised could blow that strategy sky high.