I want a conservative court, but not with Kavanaugh on it

I’ve wanted a solid conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court my whole life. But not like this

Let there be no mistake, as an attorney and as a Republican, I’ve been having a field day. I’ve been chomping at the bit for the day when I had a bench of five or six justices who saw jurisprudence (and the world for that matter) a lot like I did.

Until now, I have been an adamant defender of the honorable Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a moderate official in the George W. Bush administration, as one of the best options possible to make that a reality.

From his experience on the bench in one of the most complex arenas out there to the even-handed approach to governance he’s exhibited through the years, I thought he was the perfect fit to make my Supreme Court dreams come true. While all those things are definitely still true, I realize now that he lacks the most essential requirement that I, and this country, need on the bench: character.

In the past few weeks, the entire saga that has taken Kavanaugh from a lock for confirmation to a very flimsy prospect has seemed a little too convenient for me. Sen. Diane Feinstein waltzed in at the 11th hour with the ultimate #MeToo red meat needed to activate her base and prove she’s liberal enough to stomp her election challenger into oblivion (by the way, well played ma’am). I knew there was just no way someone who went through the kind of hurt that Christine Blasey Ford alleges would wait until the very last minute (even back in July) to bring things to light.

One may have to dig deep to find it, but Ford has been very forthcoming about this event long before America ever knew the name Brett Kavanaugh. We don’t hear much about it but Ford has been healing from this incident much longer than we know. She has produced treatment records from 2012 from mental-health professionals evaluating her familial relationships that list in explicit detail the happenings that we all know now.

Her husband came forward to let the world know his wife told him of the hurt and the name of the man who caused it. Her friends can even attest that Ford needs a bedroom with two exits so she always has a means of escape.

I’ve been active in politics for most of my life and I’ve learned to appreciate when the tactics of the other side have bested me. But nobody puts themselves through this kind of hurt for political gain. I know.

People very close to me have been victims of sexual assault and rape. The hurt they know is unimaginable, and even a mention the attack can throw their entire life into a tailspin. I’ve seen it break the strongest of people into pieces on the floor before me; those pieces take a long time to put back together, every time they break.

Those wounds never heal and the hurt they know only multiplies and spreads to everyone around them.

While I fully believe that Kavanaugh is a jurist of the first order and has likely grown into a quality man, he still owes some of us a few apologies.

He owes an apology to the husband of Ford who will spend his life wiping tears from the eyes of the woman he loves that will just never dry. He owes an apology to the kids in the backseat who had to watch mommy staring off into another world and could only wonder what was wrong.

He owes an apology to Ford who’s left to deal with the specters of a trauma most of us can only imagine, and he owes an apology to every one of us for insisting that he’s done nothing wrong.

I’m clamoring for that bench just as much as I ever have. But if it means I have to ignore a family’s brokenness, undermine courage, trivialize one of the most horrific experiences imaginable that so many of us have to deal with in silence, well, I don’t want it.