(CNN) On Monday in New York, President Donald Trump dismissed the second allegation of sexual misconduct against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as "totally political."

That's in keeping with what appears to be the White House's pushback against Deborah Ramirez, a former Yale University classmate of Kavanaugh, who has alleged that the Supreme Court nominee exposed himself and put his genitals very close to her during a drunken party in their freshman year. White House counsel Kellyanne Conway said in an interview with CBS on Monday morning that the allegations against Kavanuagh are "starting to feel like a vast left-wing conspiracy."

And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went off on Democrats Monday afternoon, accusing them of conducting a "shameful, shameful smear campaign."

There's an element of truth in the this-is-all-politics attack: The Kavanaugh confirmation fight -- and the way the allegations from Ramirez as well as California professor Christine Blasey Ford, who says Kavanaugh assaulted her when they were in high school, have landed -- is absolutely and totally political. But the politicization of this hearing happened a long time ago, and Republmicans are at least as culpable for it as are Democrats.

It began with then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid changing the Senate rules on confirming judges in 2013. It worsened -- badly -- when Republicans were unwilling to even consider the nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the seat vacated by deceased Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. The changing of Senate rules to end debate to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Court by a simple majority in 2017 further inflamed things. The deeply riven and partisan environment is the one into which Kavanaugh was nominated. And it has only gotten worse.

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