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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (13187)	2/29/2000 5:52:00 PM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769667

Who the candidate nominates for the court is HUGE. WSJ today on that: Chief Justice Souter? John McCain has been pleading with fellow Republicans not to "fear" his campaign but to "join it." We know more than a few Republicans who might heed that plea if only the insurgent candidate would promise not to make Warren Rudman his Attorney General. Republicans this year are dying to find a winner, not least because the next President may replace as many as three Supreme Court Justices. One of those could be a new chief justice, since William Rehnquist is 75 years old. So it alarms conservatives when they hear that Mr. McCain would delegate his judge-picking to Mr. Rudman, the man who helped put liberal jurist David Souter on the high court. Yes, Mr. McCain might very well defeat Al Gore, but then he might also turn around as President and give away the fruits of victory. All the more so because the Arizona Senator's own convictions are more personal than ideological. This policy choices and appointees would depend both on the influence of his advisers and of the media friends now pushing his candidacy. The only good thing we can say about Mr. Rudman as Attorney General is that he wouldn't be Treasury Secretary. We've always liked his crusty manner, even as we've disagreed with his Yankee Republican liberalism. Then again, he's never said of us what he wrote about Christian conservatives in his Senate memoir: "Politically speaking, the Republican Party is making a terrible mistake if it appears to ally itself with the Christian right. There are some fine, sincere people in its ranks, but there are also enough anti-abortion zealots, would-be censors, homophobes, bigots and latter-day Elmer Gantrys to discredit any party that is unwise enough to embrace such a group." This attitude would be disastrous at Justice, especially if Mr. Rudman repeated his Souter debacle. In his book, "Combat," Mr. Rudman takes great pride in recounting how he sold Mr. Souter to gullible White House chief of state John Sununu as a confirmable conservative. Then they both sold the judge to President Bush, who wanted above all else to avoid a confirmation battle. But Mr. Rudman says he suspected all along that Mr. Souter would never overturn activist liberal precedents. Indeed, he recounts a tearfully joyous embrace with Delaware Democrat Joe Biden after Mr. Souter had voted to reaffirm Roe v. Wade. "You were right about him," he quotes Sen. Biden as saying. "Did you read that opinion? You were right." Justice Souter has since become a reliable member of the court's four-person liberal bloc. He told his interviewers in the Reagan years that he was a conservative. But once safely confirmed, he turned out to want media respectability, bowing to what federal Judge Laurence Silberman has called the "Greenhouse effect," after Linda Greenhouse, the New York Times reporter and alpha female of the Supreme Court press pack. By the way, in that same memoir Mr. Rudman claims he'd have voted against Clarence Thomas had his vote been decisive. Mr. Thomas won 52-48. He says, in a profile of principle, that he only voted yes to win pork for New Hampshire. With the Supreme Court hanging in 5-4 balance on issues ranging from racial preferences to federalism to property rights to church-state relations, Republicans can't afford any more Souters, much less three more. This is the fear Mr. McCain needs to do more to alleviate if he wants to win more Republican votes. One way to do this would be to declare that while he loves Mr. Rudman, the former Senator wouldn't be his Attorney General. So far all Mr. McCain has done is to dismiss a question about the matter as "hilarious," and say his friend isn't interested. For his part, Mr. Rudman told the Times the other day he'd rather be ambassador to a warm climate, but we doubt he'd turn it down if asked. For now Mr. McCain seems more interested in picking fights with his fellow Republicans than in building coalitions. His Virginia Beach speech Monday criticizing Christian conservatives and calling his rival a "Pat Robertson Republican" appears calculated to do precisely that. This could yet cost him the nomination. But if he does win it, he's going to find he needs conservative Republicans as much as they need him. The earlier he starts reassuring them, the better would be his chances in November. interactive2.wsj.com