No apologies – just memory lapses. Whole different thing.
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Aside from assuming facts not in evidence, McConnell can grant three special dispensations and still have Pence confirm the nomination.
Rao seems to be having trouble reconciling her opinions with the responses she was given by the people who briefed her.
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The question is not what were Rao’s thoughts about rape decades ago. The question is did her position change prior to being coached for this appointment. Unless she has some recent writings showing her ideas evolved I don’t see any reason to believe anything she said in the hearings.
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Plus Ernst is up for reelection in 2020. Like @benthere says, she has a bit too much situational outrage to be all that convincing, especially after voting in favor of Kavanaugh and the bullshit messaging she gave about her reasons why. She obviously has different sets of standards for different women, though this judge sounds like a typical tRump nominee in the mold of all the other horrible judicial nominees that have been put before this committee and obviously, shouldn’t be confirmed.
Bottom line: Ernst is probably pulling a Susan Collins routine here, and will most likely vote for Rao, now that she’s gotten in her soundbite so she can have something to say at her town halls when someone tries to challenge her on her vote. “But I tried…”
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Not to disagree with anything you said, but just to point out that the respective voter bases (and base voters) that Sen’s Ernst and Collins have to keep in mind are very different. Opposition to abortion is very, very strong in Ioway. The odds of Ernst voting against Kavanaugh were about the same as one of those castrated pigs sprouting wings and a replacement pair of stones, simultaneously.
Collins certainly could have voted differently with the support of quite a few folks back home.
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Ernst voted for Kavanaugh, and for Trump, and will for for Roa, despite her rather inflammatory writings - that women who are raped deserved it as they were probably drinking - which are standard stuff in the right wing bubble.
That Ernst claims she was raped is just a defense she puts up to try to deflect attention from her voting record. She has to run again in 2020, and wants people to feel sorry for her, not look at her record.
Given the horrible things she has done and voted for, hopefully Iowa voters will not be swayed by her appeals to sympathy.
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That is so very correct.
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So…let’s see…FOX will play this as Ernst PUSHING BACK HARD as equal to the Democrats screaming for Northam’s resignation…and then of course, Joni will vote FOR her confirmation because after all we shouldn’t judge a person for what they did in law school. THIS is why Democrats can’t have nice things.
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This is why I’ll always resist lowering ourselves to their level.
She’s a woman, so maybe they’ll hold her to a different standard than Kavanaugh.
Have no doubt, Ernst will vote for her as will Collins, Capito and Murkowski.
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This is an exercise in a particularly Republican form of Kabuki Theater: nominee expresses regret about incident in the past - as all incidents tend to be (in the past, that is - it’s a law in this universe, apparently highlighting some failure or indiscretion, which somehow the nominee purports to have gone past yet without being able to articulate WHY is was ‘wrong’, so typically in a creative toss-up of word salad and bafflegab. while questioner appears to burnish her or his political cred in some way aiming to soften her image with voters generally opposed to her, all without ever actually registering a vote against the nominee.
Thanks for playing along, TPM. Always nice to see American news media doing their bit to keep fascists in power.
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“A victim of a horrible crime is not to blame,” Rao said. “The person who commits the crime should be held responsible. I tried to make the comments and observations that women can take certain steps to try to avoid becoming a victim because that does seem to be the goal in making it less likely. Should someone be a victim, they should not be blamed.”
She’s still trying to justify her position. When will rape apologists learn that the goal in making it less likely is to HAVE MEN STOP FUCKING RAPING WOMEN. Full stop. “Meh, ladies, just change your behavior and live in fear” is an argument that should rightfully be scorned whenever it is made.
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Phony Joni voted for Boof Kavanaugh. This is only because she has an election in 2020 and she’s scared.
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It’s not really right (in both senses) to say that Ernst is a sexual assault survivor. No police record. Just hear-say from decades ago. If it was really rape she would have gone to the police …
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Oh this just scratches the surface . As they say over at Crooks and Liars “Where does Trump find these people?”
My Mind is blown
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I don’t understand why some women continue to blame the victim when it’s a woman but give the attacker the benefit of the doubt. It’s like they have no self-respect or esteem. None. How does that make them qualified for any job?
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So this nominee’s qualification for the second highest court in the land is that she’s a republican operative and a member of trump’s white house staff? Makes Harriet Miers look good.
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How embarrassing must her views have been to jump right over the fact that she’s never tried a case. I wonder what fraction of appeals court decisions ammount to whether the case was tried correctly.
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My question to Joni Ernst is, when you married your husband you were 22, had given birth to two daughters and had never been married. In your campaign literature, in interviews and even on information sites like Wikipedia there is no mention or information about your birth daughters before you were married. So my question is why? Why are there no pictures or mention of your birth daughters before you were married anywhere official literature or campaign and are mostly even kept off impartial information providers?
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