The saga of Brett Kavanaugh made me sick on a very personal level. I know from experience what rape can do to a human being. I know what a foul and dehumanizing act of violence it is. And that’s why weaponizing rape and sexual assault is a sick, repulsive strategy, and why any politician using it should be shunned – I don’t care what side of the political aisle said creature comes from.

The local radio stations in Virginia recently ran a political spot by GOP Senate candidate Corey Stewart implying that incumbent Democrat Tim Kaine was guilty of sexual harassment, because Kaine supposedly opposed releasing data from the Congressional Office of Compliance about Congressional misconduct payouts of more than $17 million for allegations of everything from sexual misconduct to racism.

In the ad, Stewart refers to $17.2 million paid by Congress since 1990 for 264 settlements and awards to federal employees for violations of a wide variety of employment rules, ranging from the Americans With Disabilities Act to sexual harassment. A “large portion” of the cases involved legislative offices other than the House and the Senate, according to the Congressional Office of Compliance.

“While Tim Kaine and the Democrats falsely accuse Judge Kavanaugh over high school rumors, they won’t tell us which of the senators are sexual predators,” Stewart says in the ad, referring to Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh. An ominous soundtrack plays in the background. “Why not Senator Kaine? What are you hiding? Are you on that list?”

That claim is absolute and utter horse shit on several levels.

Kaine, in fact, has pushed the OCC to release information about these misconduct allegations, and he was denied.

Not that this matters to Corey Stewart, who apparently took the repugnant travesty that was Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation fiasco as license to hurl sexual assault allegations at his opponent in a desperate attempt to reduce his lag in the polls, where he’s trailing Kaine by double digits.

Let’s get something straight right now.

What Corey Stewart is doing is disgusting. He is weaponizing rape for political expediency, much like Dianne Feinstein and Mazie Hirono did with Brett Kavanaugh. He is Cory Booker and Kamala Harris in white supremacist drag. He is using every victim – every man, woman, and child who has suffered the soul-crushing violence of rape and sexual assault – as a tool to destroy the reputation and life of his opponent, because Stewart is an impotent little rodent who has no clear path to victory and nothing to offer Virginia voters other than his tongue bathing of white supremacist taint and his reputation for being such a pernicious yambag, that he was shitcanned by the Trump campaign in 2016.

Make no mistake. Stewart wasn’t disgusted by the attempted destruction and humiliation of Brett Kavanaugh. He took lessons from it.

What the Democrats did to Kavanaugh made me want to throw up. They ruined his reputation. They called him a serial rapist. They caused his wife and children to receive death threats. They tried to tank him based on garbage hearsay with no corroborating evidence. And although he ultimately prevailed, he will forever carry that stain with him thanks to the filthy efforts of Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, Harris, and Booker. What they did was attempt to destroy a man’s life because they disagreed with him politically.

Destroy. His. Life.

And now Corey Stewart thinks it’s OK to do the same thing to Kaine because the Democrats did it first?

Oh, hell no! I refuse to be used as a weapon in Stewart’s puerile, weak attempt to gain political points by destroying the life and reputation of yet another man, and I don’t give a rat’s gangrenous ass what his political views are! And I would hope that every victim – no matter what gender, race, or political affiliation would find such tactics ethically unacceptable.

I can’t stand Kaine’s politics. There’s very little I find in his political agenda with which to agree. He was Hillary Clinton’s running mate, ferfuckssake! But just like with Kavanaugh, I find this attempt to paint him with the brush of sexual harassment/assault disgusting to my very core. If there’s one thing with which I do agree, it’s Kaine’s effort to wrest information from the OCC about the taxpayer payoffs to those alleging misconduct.

And to be sure, this is not the first time Stewart has launched misleading, repulsive attacks on his opponents. In a contentious primary, Stewart field directors mocked Freitas’ last name (he’s of Portuguese descent) as something you’d get off “a Taco Bell menu,” and when called to repudiate the attack, Stewart said his opponent – who was a Green Beret, by the way, and has more courage and integrity in his beard clippings on any given day than Stewart has had in his entire career – should grow a thicker skin if he hoped to take on Kaine in the fall.

If this is what Stewart meant when he promised a “vicious Senate campaign” against Kaine, I want no part of it.

Sexual assault, rape, and sexual harassment are not a game. They’re not a political tool to be used by ethically challenged politicians in a game of “let’s see who can sling more mud.” The victims of sexual violence are not your tool to exploit, Dianne Feinstein, Cory Booker, and Corey Stewart.

Weaponizing rape is a no-go at this station, motherfucker.

Featured photo courtesy of Associated Press file photos at The News & Advance.