Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) is the person that Christine Blasey Ford first contacted in her quest to stop Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. Eshoo is now in her 13th term in the House of Representatives. Ford is a constituent in Eshoo’s district. The women met in Eshoo’s office and spent an hour and a half together. Ford asked Eshoo to contact Senator Feinstein. Eshoo also agreed to keep Ford’s identity secret.

Feinstein asked for a letter from Ford. Eshoo arranged for Ford’s letter to be delivered to Feinstein on the same day it was dated, July 30, 2018. Remember that Judge Kavanaugh was nominated by President Trump on July 9, 2018. So, Feinstein had this letter in her possession just shortly after Kavanaugh’s nomination. Yet, as we all know now, Feinstein allowed the letter’s existence and Ford’s claim to be held from the public (much less from fellow Judicial Committee members) until the Senate hearings were completed.

The kicker for me is that Eshoo not only believes Ford, which I don’t find unusual, but claimed in an interview with Judy Woodruff on PBS’s Newshour that Dr. Ford “doesn’t have a political bone in her body.” (emphasis mine)

Because of the details, really finite details that remained with her.

I think there’s something that is not appreciated in our country. And that is that 93 percent of sexual assault victims are found to have told the truth.

And so, yes, there’s a juxtaposition of someone that essentially is your next-door neighbor. She’s married. She has two young sons. She’s a professor. But she — this woman doesn’t have a political bone in her body.

This isn’t exactly true, of course. It’s true, from all that I’ve read, that Ford isn’t living a life focused on politics but she is political. She’s given modest donations to ActBlue, for example, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. She grew up living a privileged life in the Washington D.C. area. She knew exactly who to contact and the process involved in exposing herself to the public with the allegation against Kavanaugh. She hired a well-known activist Democrat as her attorney. That attorney, Debra Katz, and another attorney on the case, Lisa Banks, were listed as headliners at a fundraiser for Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) until that story made national headlines. They have since backed out of the event. To say that Ford isn’t political at all is a stretch, to put it politely.

Eshoo is scheduled to appear on Sunday’s Face the Nation. No doubt she’ll have plenty to say about Dr. Ford. Something that I’ll be listening for is the trope being pushed by some of the more aggressively vocal Democrat women in elected office – that Senator Grassley (Chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee) and Republicans are bullying Dr. Ford. This cry is so absurd, it makes me angry.

Senator Grassley has been much more patient throughout this process than I would be if I were in his shoes. The man has now given Dr. Ford 5, count ’em, 5 deadline extensions to the very basic question of if she will appear and give the Judicial Committee her story. She’s been offered the option of staffers coming to her to hear her story when she said she couldn’t come to Washington. Her demands, through her attorneys, are out of line. She fails to comprehend the fact that she isn’t the one to set the conditions of her testimony. There is a process and Grassley is determined to carry that process out. We are still waiting to hear if she will testify in Washington as I write this Saturday morning. Now she says she doesn’t fly because she can’t be in such small enclosed spaces, yet she offers to drive across country. I’m pretty sure her car is smaller than a plane would be.

I am a Republican woman and here is my take on this political circus. The more the drama plays out, the more I’m convinced that Dr. Ford came forward to torpedo Judge Kavanaugh at the very last moment using the playbook from the Anita Hill days. I remember that spectacle as I watched it play out on television. All of the Judicial Committee members were white men and the Democrats were in the majority in the Senate, therefore they ran the Committee. It was a circus and the re-writing of that time by today’s Democrats is appalling. If you remember, Joe Biden who was chairman of that committee has even talked about apologizing to Hill as he contemplates running for President in 2020. To imply that only Republicans strongly demanded answers from Hill is a lie. Democrats were aggressive too. His committee work has not aged well. Hill also waited until Justice Clarence Thomas’ hearing was finished to make her claim against him. For the record, I didn’t believe Anita Hill and I don’t believe Christine Ford.

I believe that the media is so invested in Dr. Ford’s story and the opportunity to deny President Trump his choice for the Supreme Court that it must have been a real shock when CNN interviewed Republican women in Florida (a swing state) and learned that they side with Judge Kavanaugh. In regular America, women usually give other women the benefit of the doubt in sexual assault claims but we also look at the facts as they are presented. To hear the Democrat women in elected office drone on about how all women must always be believed is insulting to all women. To blame Republicans as having a Neanderthal approach to women is so tiresome.

I believe that Democrats have grown accustomed to Republican leadership caving instead of forging ahead and fighting for nominees when the going gets complicated. There is plenty of evidence of that scenario over the last few years. Usually, an allegation is made and rather than risk the circus, Republicans just back out of the nomination. This time we have a different kind of Republican president and he’s a fighter. I think this has stiffened the spine of Senator Grassley and the Republicans on the Judicial Committee. Ford and her entourage of activist Democrat women attorneys didn’t count on that. Now that Ford is being held accountable and asked to tell her story, she’s trying to get out of it.

Ford’s social media accounts were scrubbed before she went public. Her High School yearbooks have been found, though, and they show lots of photos of her days as a student. There are lots of party photos and references to drinking. Her story has lots of holes, at least the parts we’ve all read about so far. She is very vague on details yet claims to be certain about Kavanaugh’s identity. She very well may have been assaulted. I do not find it unusual that she didn’t tell her parents – she was a drunk 15- year -old at a house party. I do find it odd that we first read that she was held against her will in a room and then that escalated to attempted rape. This is why it is important to hear from her.

Dr. Ford should be heard. Judge Kavanaugh deserves to rebut her claims. What happened to a presumption of innocence in this country? Senator Gillibrand says Ford shouldn’t testify now – that it is going to be a “sham” hearing and Ford will be bullied. We’ve now reached the point that asking her to tell her story is bullying her. You can’t make this stuff up. All of this hurts women, it doesn’t help them.

Let’s hear from them both. We deserve to hear both sides of this story. We must not allow last-minute character assassinations to dictate how nominations proceed. Senator Feinstein needs to be held accountable for her tragic mishandling of this procedure. While we are at it, let’s investigate Feinstein’s staffer of twenty years who turned out to be a Chinese spy. If Dr. Ford doesn’t agree to a time and place by Senator Grassley’s latest deadline, it is time to call the vote in the committee and move it to the full Senate for a vote. #TimesUp

Democrats know that if Judge Kavanaugh isn’t confirmed by the end of September, he will not be on the bench at the Supreme Court when their session begins in October. That is the plan – delay, delay, delay. Enough.