Senate Republicans reportedly want an outside counsel (read: Republican lawyer) or possibly Senate aides to question Christine Blasey Ford about her sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh because they’re worried about optics. The optics in question are the 11 Republican men on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the image of those 11 men subjecting a woman to hostile questioning about an assault.
The memories of 1991 and an all-male Judiciary Committee staring down the courageous Anita Hill are still strong, and even Republicans know that it’s a bad look.
So Republicans are looking to find a ringer, specifically a female ringer. But they wouldn’t need to do that if there was a single woman among the 11 Republicans on the committee. By contrast, there are four women among the 10 Democrats on the committee. This is not a fluke: there has never been a Republican woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Now Republicans are worried how it will look if they have 11 men—the senators they chose to serve on this important committee—questioning Ford. Maybe they should have been worried earlier about keeping the committee that vets all federal judges as a total sausage-fest, at least on their side of the aisle. Bringing in a woman, whether an outside counsel or an aide, to channel their hostile questions doesn’t change the fundamental statement about who deserves power and who can shape the federal courts that Republicans have made every single time they have appointed senators to the Judiciary Committee.
Zero out of 11 women vs. four out of 10. Democrats aren’t perfect, but this is one more reason we need to take back the Senate. Can you chip in $1 to Nevada’s Jacky Rosen and Texas’s Beto O’Rourke?