The problem for Republicans is how to finesse this process in a manner that does just enough superficial due diligence to allow wavering senators to come back into the fold — to get to at least 50 votes for Kavanaugh — without damaging the nominee to the point where Republican support for him causes costly political blowback for Republicans in the midterms.

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On Monday, you could see multiple Republicans groping for a way to solve this problem, and the results were not pretty.

For instance, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) put out a statement claiming that Ford “deserves to be heard,” and called on Democrats to join Republicans in a process designed “to get the facts expeditiously” — while also insisting that putting the truth first requires Democrats to agree to rush the vote through on the original timeline that Republicans want. To justify this contortion, Hatch blamed Democrats for failing to get the information about Ford out earlier, which he claimed was “in bad faith.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) similarly blasted Democrats for that same supposed failure, and said that if Democrats don’t agree to the procedure for giving Ford a hearing on terms set by Republicans, then “it’s clear their only intention is to smear Judge Kavanaugh and derail his nomination.”

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And Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, put out a statement that also lodged this criticism against Democrats, while also clarifying that he will proceed with arranging private phone calls between Ford and senators.

These objections to the Democratic delay are questionable on their face. The Post article that broke the news of Ford going public went into great detail about how this episode developed, and laid out a chronology that offers a perfectly plausible explanation for that delay:

[Ford] contacted The Post through a tip line in early July, when it had become clear that Kavanaugh was on the shortlist of possible nominees . . . she contacted her congresswoman, Democrat Anna G. Eshoo, around the same time. In late July, she sent a letter via Eshoo’s office to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. In the letter, which was read to The Post, Ford described the incident and said she expected her story to be kept confidential. . . . Though Ford had contacted The Post, she declined to speak on the record for weeks as she grappled with concerns about what going public would mean for her and her family — and what she said was her duty as a citizen to tell the story. By late August, Ford had decided not to come forward, calculating that doing so would upend her life and probably would not affect Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” she said. Her story leaked anyway. On Wednesday, the Intercept reported that Feinstein had a letter describing an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in high school and that Feinstein was refusing to share it with her Democratic colleagues.

In this telling, Ford tried to contact the Post before Kavanaugh was even the nominee, which means she was trying to prevent this nomination from happening well in advance, badly undercutting the idea that these charges were only hatched at the 11th hour to bring down this nomination. What’s more, Ford had actually decided not to come forward once he actually became the nominee, which also undercuts that theory.

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This chronology also undercuts the GOP theorizing about the role of Democrats, undermining the notion that they deliberately slow-walked the claim and only rolled it out in bad faith at the last minute. As The Post’s chronology establishes, she had decided against doing this — meaning the failure to divulge the charges was in keeping with what she wanted — but only did so after her story leaked.

Now, one could perhaps legitimately blame the Democrat who leaked this, whoever he or she is, for presumably doing that against Ford’s will. But regardless, Ford’s lawyer, Debra Katz, addressed the broader GOP theory in an interview with the New York Times, flatly declaring that all along Ford had asked Democrats to maintain her confidentiality, and that they had respected this by not going public.

And even if you accept the fact that some Democrat did leak this improperly, the Republican argument still makes zero sense. None of these Republicans have explained why their objections to the timing of these revelations should preclude either a renewed FBI investigation into the charges, or a public hearing that would enable the American people to hear both Ford and Kavanaugh explain themselves under tough questioning.

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It is highly likely that Republicans know that such a public hearing will look terrible for them. Yet they also know they must be seen wanting Ford to “be heard.” (In fairness, some of them, such as Flake and Collins, actually do appear to want this, but this is precisely what is creating the problem for GOP leaders.) So they are looking to define “being heard” down, by trying to get away with claiming that, say, private calls with senators constitute “being heard,” and laying the groundwork to refuse a damaging public hearing that would actually make it possible for Ford to “be heard,” while blaming Democrats for it.