We have a new standard in politics. Even things you said and did in high school are now fair game. Let’s call it the Kavanaugh/Covington standard.
Democrats attempted to block Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the United States Supreme Court with last-minute, lurid accusations regarding his high-school days. These accusations included that he attempted to sexually assault a girl while in high school (Christine Blasey Ford), and that he attended gang rape parties while in high school (Julie Swetnick). Democrats even unearthed his high school yearbook and argued that the term “boofing” meant f__king, not farting, and supported the allegations.
Democrats insisted that the allegations should be assumed to be true and Kavanaugh had the burden of proving his innocence.In other words, guilty until proven innocent.
Ultimately all these lurid accusations were sufficiently discredited to gain the support of enough wavering “centrist” Republican Senators to confirm Kavanaugh.
More recently, the Left went after a group of high school students from Covington Catholic for allegedly disrespecting an American Indian elder. Again the Left applied a presumed guilty until proven innocent standard, and the boys had to prove their innocence.
What would happen if we applied this Kavanaugh/Covington standard to the leader of the New Hampshire Democrat Party, Ray Buckley?
A little over a decade ago a former Buckley ally turned adversary, Steve Vaillancourt (who is now deceased), charged —in response to Ray Buckley announcing a run for Chairman of the New Hampshire Democrat Party— that Buckley was a connoisseur of child pornography. Buckley, whom I believe has never held a nonpolitical private sector job, had lived —Vaillancourt would say freeloaded— in Vaillancourt’s home for years.
Shortly thereafter, a video involving Buckley was posted to YouTube.This post on Granite Grok from 2007 will get you to the video.If memory serves me correctly, Vaillancourt provided some of the footage to Alderman Joe Kelly Levasseur (footage that had been taken on a trip to Europe and in Vaillancourt’s home), and Levasseur added additional footage, including footage of Buckley’s myspace account that could be construed to support the child pornography charges.
As for the child pornography charges:
Under the Kavanaugh/Covington standard, this would not be enough to clear Buckley. All of the witnesses named by Christine Blasey Ford failed to corroborate her allegations. Yet all the Senate Democrats with the exception of West Virginia’s Joe Manchin voted against Kavanaugh.
(Parenthetically, I was told that the computer in issue disappeared from Democrat Party headquarters, but that nothing else was discovered missing. I have no personal knowledge, but the person who told me is now the head of a State agency.)
Other videos followed the video uploaded by Levasseur. This one focuses on the footage shot by Vaillancourt in his home and on the European vacation:
Under the Kavanaugh/Covington standard, Buckley would be presumed to be an admirer of Hitler and the burden would be on him to disprove.
Back in 2014, I was actually called by a reporter at the Free Beacon about this video because a person in the Scott Brown campaign had misinformed the reporter and indicated that I had the unedited version. The reporter indicated he had spoken to Buckley and Buckley claimed that the video had been “deceptively edited.” I explained to the reporter that my understanding was that Vaillancourt had taken the videos and I did not possess the originals or even copies. I also asked him, essentially: “Did Buckley tell you what he was saying Hitler should have bombed if not the Hague?” The response I got was, essentially: “Good point.”
Perhaps it would not be appropriate to apply the Kavanaugh/Covington standard to Buckley. What I mean is that the allegations against Kavanaugh and the Covington boys involved high school age boys. Buckley was much older -in his late 20s, I believe- when the “Hitler should have bombed it” footage was taken.
