ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg denounced what “a highly partisan show” the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings had become when she described to law students at George Washington University a fortnight ago how such confirmation hearings used to be.

“The way it was, was right,” she said. “The way it is [now], is wrong.”

Tragedy, the deliberate destruction of a good man and a reputation for honor and integrity built over the decades, is quickly becoming cheap farce. Christine Blasey Ford, who in collusion with Sen. Dianne Feinstein ignited this “highly partisan show” with her accusation that Judge Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape her 36 years ago, first said she was willing and eager to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee all about it.

She would go anywhere, any time, to tell what a dirty rotter the teenage Brett was. So the Republicans on the committee, skeptical or not, offered her a private or a public audience, one with the television cameras sending her story to the millions worldwide, an audience that stars of stage, screen and radio only dream of, or she would talk to the senators in a private session.

She was “ready to go.” She would do “whatever is necessary” to get the story out. On Monday of this week her lawyer, Debra Katz, went on CNN to say that neither she nor her client had heard from the Senate committee. “We’ve heard from no one. We’ve seen various statements made on television, but statements that are being bandied about for political reasons. But no one’s asked her, so she decided to take control of this and tell this in her own voice.”

She had made a very serious accusation, and the senators were eager to hear why. If her accusation could be proved to the satisfaction of the senators, not only would the Kavanaugh nomination be dead but the judge might lose his seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, either through resignation in disgrace or by impeachment. This was clearly not the easy game that Mrs. Feinstein told her it was, nor what she might have thought it was. This was not a “couples therapy” session where everyone was encouraged to share a warm and fuzzy story of hard times at home.

The committee would delay the vote for a week, to give Mrs. Ford time to collect herself, rummage through her memory to see whether she could explain the gaps in the account she gave to The Washington Post.

Suddenly, she wasn’t quite as “ready to go” as she thought she was. She would testify only after the FBI got to the bottom of her story. The FBI, which had already vetted the judge six times and had never found anything like the incident Mrs. Ford describes, has no such investigation under way. The famous federal detectives would have a task that would challenge Hercule Poirot — investigate something that occurred 36 years ago with the accuser not sure what happened, when it happened, where it happened, or how she got there and how she got home. How many doubts was she entitled to get the benefit of?

And then, silence. Neither Mrs. Ford nor her lawyers returned calls from the Judiciary Committee eager to arrange the session she had all but begged for. Mike Davis, the committee’s chief counsel for nominations, complained about her silence. “I personally questioned Judge Kavanaugh under penalty of felony and five years’ imprisonment, if he lies. I’m still waiting to hear back from the accusers’ attorneys, who can’t find time between TV appearances to get back to me.”

Then she was ready to go again. Just not so fast. She and her lawyers still wanted the FBI to investigate “the story.” They could take their time, of course. Kirsten Gillibrand, the senator from New York and a member of the committee, accused the Republicans of trying to “force her into a sham hearing to silence her.” This was a new one in the annals of logic, a threat to silence an accuser by offering her an audience of millions.

No one can any longer be fooled. The Democratic game is delay, delay, delay, inspired by the hope that maybe the Democrats can collect two or three senators in the midterms, enabling them to destroy Brett Kavanaugh as a way to finally destroy Donald Trump.

Mrs. Ford has outed herself as a fantasist. Her one last hope is that the Republicans will cave, as they often do under pressure. Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the committee, sounds determined and bullet proof, as if he understands that he and the Republicans will be graveyard dead if they hang Brett Kavanaugh out to dry. So hang on, Justice Ginsburg. You still ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

• Wesley Pruden is editor in chief emeritus of The Times.

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