I am not surprised the Dems are screaming on this one. It is very easy to sell that they are Anti-Catholic Bigots. And there are 80 Million Catholics out there, with a majority of them usually voting Democratic. They may not filibuster because of this.
Accusation of Bias Angers Democrats
By ROBIN TONER - NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON, July 26 - The battle over judicial nominations has grown ever more bitter on Capitol Hill, but Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee say they are particularly outraged over the latest turn: the accusation that their resistance to some conservative nominees amounts to anti-Catholic bias.
In a recent newspaper advertising campaign, run by groups supporting the Bush administration's judicial nominees, a closed courtroom door bears the sign "Catholics Need Not Apply." The advertisement argues that William Pryor Jr., the Alabama attorney general and a conservative, anti-abortion nominee to the federal appeals court, was under attack in the Senate because of his "deeply held" Catholic beliefs.
Democrats say they oppose Mr. Pryor because of his record, including what they assert is a history of extreme statements on issues like abortion and the separation of church and state. All nine Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against Mr. Pryor's confirmation this week, while the 10 Republicans voted for it, sending the issue to the full Senate ? and the likelihood of further Democratic opposition.
Republicans and their conservative allies argue that the Democrats have created a de facto religious test by their emphasis on a nominee's stand on issues like abortion. "It's not just Catholics," said Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice, one of the groups that paid for these advertisements, which are running in Maine and Rhode Island. "I think there's an element of the far left of the Democratic Party that sees as its project scrubbing the public square of religion, and in some cases not only religion but of religious people."
Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, sounded a similar theme this week, asserting that "the left is trying to enforce an antireligious litmus test" whereby "nominees who openly adhere to Catholic and Baptist doctrines, as a matter of personal faith, are unqualified for the federal bench in the eyes of the liberal Washington interest groups."
The accusation of anti-Catholic bias seemed especially galling to some of the Democratic senators who happen to be Catholic. Four of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are Catholic. In fact, 57 percent of the Catholics in the House and the Senate are Democrats, according to the forthcoming Vital Statistics on Congress, 2003-4 edition.
Like many Americans of Irish descent, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, said he grew up hearing his father talk about the bad old days when Irish Catholics were greeted with signs saying they "need not apply." He added, "It was a horrible part of our history, and it's almost like you have people willing to rekindle that for a short-term political gain, for a couple of judges."
Senator Richard J. Durbin, who is Catholic, said he reached his limit at a committee meeting on Wednesday when Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama (and a Methodist), began explaining Mr. Pryor's positions as "what a good Catholic believes."
Mr. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who personally opposes abortion but backs abortion rights, added, "I understand the painful process I have to go through with the elders of the church on many of these issues, explaining my position. But it is galling, to say the least, when my colleagues in the Senate, of another religion, start speaking ex cathedra."
Many Catholic elected officials are, perhaps, particularly sensitive to the line between religious faith and public responsibilities. It was a line drawn most vividly by President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic president, who had to deal with widespread fears that a Roman Catholic president would serve both Rome and the American people.
Kennedy responded by declaring, "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president, should he be a Catholic, how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote." In recent years, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo reasserted that line, particularly regarding abortion.
Behind the anger of many Democrats is the suspicion that this advertising campaign is part of the Republican Party's courtship of Catholics, an important swing vote. In general, Andy Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, said Mr. Bush was "doing pretty well with white Catholics" lately.
It is all part of a politics that has changed radically since 1960. Among the nine Democrats on the Judiciary Committee accused of working against the interests of Catholic judicial nominees is, of course, John Kennedy's brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
nytimes.com |
