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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWAPO OP ED: The Kavanaugh doppelganger theory shows how far the right has descended into madness
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2018/09/21/the-kavanaugh-doppelganger-theory-shows-how-far-the-right-has-descended-into-madness/?utm_term=.32f6b3089e85The Kavanaugh doppelganger theory shows how far the right has descended into madness
By Max Boot, Columnist, September 21 at 3:29 PM
That Kavanaugh is the victim of mistaken identity was the implausible theory put forward by Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. On Thursday night he posted (and now has deleted) a long series of tweets, complete with links to Zillow and Google Maps, arguing that Ford had indeed been assaulted but by a friend of Kavanaughs who looked a lot like him. And then he proceeded to name the friend and post his picture. In the long annals of American politics, a lot of people have done a lot of irresponsible things, but for sheer callousness and craziness its hard to top an accusation of sexual assault against a specific individual based on, essentially, nothing. This is McCarthyism redux and if Kavanaugh is revealed to have any connection to the propagation of this loathsome falsehood, he should be voted down overwhelmingly by the Senate.
It tells you how far the right has descended into madness that this vile accusation did not come from an anonymous blogger on some online bulletin board or from professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. It came from someone with sterling establishment credentials: Whelan is a Harvard Law School graduate who has served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a Senate Judiciary Committee staffer, and a deputy assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration. He is also friends with Kavanaugh and with Federalist Society executive vice president Leonard Leo, and has been involved in efforts to confirm Kavanaugh.
That someone so seemingly respectable was spreading this cuckoo conspiracy theory gave it instant validity: Fox and Friends aired it to a national audience Friday morning. Amplified by Russian bots, this theory went viral on social media, because it fit so neatly with what so many conservatives were already saying. As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review, [T]he unverifiable sexual-assault allegation against Judge Brett Kavanaugh bore all the hallmarks of a set-up.
This makes no sense: Why would Ford set up Kavanaugh when the cost of doing so is to have her name dragged through the mud and forced to flee her own home to avoid death threats? If she is setting up Kavanaugh, why would she take (and pass) a polygraph test and insist on an FBI investigation, knowing that lying to the FBI is a federal crime? If she was setting up Kavanaugh, why would she place his friend Mark Judge in the room, knowing that his testimony could contradict hers? And, why if this is a set-up, did she relay the sexual assault allegation to her marital therapist in 2012? Did she intuit years in advance that Kavanaugh would be nominated to the Supreme Court but fail to foresee that, like every other woman who has made such allegations against a powerful man, she would be subject to character assassination?
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WAPO OP ED: The Kavanaugh doppelganger theory shows how far the right has descended into madness (Original Post)
lindysalsagal
Sep 2018
OP
Foxy Friends demanded lie detector tests for WH staff to find anonymous...but for Brett, not so
Fred Sanders
Sep 2018
#3
Eliot Rosewater
(31,130 posts)1. Of course everyone now knows she is telling the truth and he is lying
The problem is like with all the other violent crimes committed by this administration and mcconnell and others they dont care
malaise
(269,219 posts)4. The fake news party
Good effin' grief - theirs is alternative reality on steroids. Just make it up and spread it.
riversedge
(70,347 posts)2. The Trumpswamp is full of mad people!!
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)3. Foxy Friends demanded lie detector tests for WH staff to find anonymous...but for Brett, not so
much.
That smell in the air all Americans now are surrounded with is...Republican mass hypocrisy bubbling to the surface.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)5. As I keep saying, we are dealing with the cra cra and evil.
Not differences of opinion over policy, but just plain bad people. And nuts.
Hekate
(90,865 posts)6. Max Boot earns my respect. These people are evil personified
Max Boot has impeccable conservative credentials, but he got off the crazy train a long time ago.