Orrin Hatch goes off the deep end as Brett Kavanaugh nomination sinks

| 7:30 pm EDT September 17, 2018
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Over the past twenty-four hours we’ve seen a number of Republican Senators publicly inching away from Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, as his accuser has gone public, and the attempted rape scandal has continued to get uglier. Orrin Hatch is not one of them. He’s continued to support Kavanaugh today, and the rationales he’s now floating are nothing short of jaw dropping.

Orrin Hatch told Lisa Desjardins of PBS Newshour today that he thinks Kavanaugh’s accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, is “mixed up” about the party. He also told Fox News that Ford “may be mistaking [Kavanaugh] for someone else.” Hatch is clearly afraid of the blowback that would result if he outright calls Ford a liar, but he’s nonetheless trying to paint her as not telling the truth about what happened. But it was what Hatch said next that’s set off alarms across the board.

According to Laura Litvan of Bloomberg, Orrin Hatch said this about Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh tried to rape her: “If that were true, I think it would be hard for senators not to consider who he is today.” Hatch is literally saying that it’s okay to put an attempted rapist on the Supreme Court because he’s supposedly a better person now than when he tried to rape the woman. This is the kind of argument you generally hear about whether a rapist should be allowed out of prison on parole, not about whether a rapist should be allowed on the Supreme Court.

Orrin Hatch isn’t doing Brett Kavanaugh’s prospects any favors. By jumping straight to the ‘even if he’s a rapist we should still vote for him’ rationale, he’s making it harder for wavering Republican Senators to hang in there with Kavanaugh. Now, if they vote for him, they’re going to be seen as being okay with him even if he’s guilty – and they know it.