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Politics : The Supreme Court, All Right or All Wrong? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (478)	8/16/2005 8:13:44 PM
From: sandintoes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3029

It's hard to fight when people are having a good time.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (478)	8/16/2005 9:11:16 PM
From: sandintoes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3029

With deft Roberts choice, Bush plays judicial jujitsu Who says President Bush isn’t brilliant? His maneuver in appointing Judge John Roberts has completely throttled the Democrats in the highest-stakes game of his second term. The key is that Bush has used the Democrats’ opposition to his district and circuit-court judicial appointments against them and made it a ratification of the Roberts candidacy. Simply put, by choosing a judge whom the Democrats confirmed unanimously when he was nominated for the D.C. Circuit Court — and whom they did not filibuster — Bush has made the Democrats impotent. The Democrats thought they were preparing for the Supreme Court battle when they hit on their strategy of filibustering Bush’s judicial nominations. They saw these battles as spring training to get them in shape for the real fight that would come when Bush made his Supreme Court nomination. Instead, their strategy has backfired massively. By lending such a high profile to their opposition to Bush’s lower-court appointments, the Democrats have effectively denied themselves the ability to filibuster anyone of whom they have approved in the past. When the Democrats singled out certain of Bush’s appointees to the courts for filibusters and strident opposition, they, in effect, gave their seal of approval to those whom they did not filibuster. Their silence is like the classic case in Sherlock Holmes of the dog that didn’t bark. And when the Democratic Senators agreed to a voice vote on Roberts, in effect confirming him unanimously, their seal of approval was made even more explicit. Now, having voted for Roberts and having not filibustered his nomination, the Democrats cannot come back and suddenly discover reasons to oppose him. Obviously, if Roberts says the wrong things at his confirmation hearings or abandons the wise strategy laid out by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in refusing to spell out her likely decisions on cases that will come before the court, then all bets are off. But if Roberts handles himself well and avoids explicitly committing himself on Roe v. Wade and other issues, Bush has succeeded in putting him over and dodging the bullet that seemed to be marked for him when Sandra Day O’Connor resigned. Has Bush fooled the left or the right? Will Roberts be the reliable pro-life vote that the Christian right hopes, or will he be the judicial conservative, respectful of precedent — including Roe — that the left hopes? We won’t know until after he takes his seat and casts his vote. But Bush has threaded his way through a minefield in selecting the most conservative judge who has already received recent Senate approval — and garnered a unanimous Democratic vote. It is very interesting to see how Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) will vote on the Roberts nomination. Should she back him, she will be defying her core constituency — the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America. For now, her vote for Roberts might win her points in moving to the center. But if Roberts votes against Roe, Hillary will have a very hard time explaining her support for him, especially if Sens. John Kerry (Mass.), Evan Bayh (Ind.) and Joe Biden (Del.) — her potential Democratic rivals in 2008 — vote against his confirmation. On the other hand, if Hillary joins what is likely to be a small minority of Democrats in opposing Roberts, she is belying her supposed move to the center and showing that, when the chips are down, she will tack to the left. In posing such a dilemma for Mrs. Clinton, Bush has again shown his capacity for deft political maneuver. Bush can just follow the Roberts playbook as future Supreme Court vacancies come up. Just appoint the most conservative available jurist whom the Democrats did not filibuster and he can escape political damage while appeasing his hard-right followers. Bush is brilliant. There is no other way to read it. Morris is the author of Rewriting History, a rebuttal of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) memoir, Living History. hillnews.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (478)	8/18/2005 12:25:14 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 3029

Roberts Battle Adds to Democrats' Divide By Dan Balz Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 18, 2005; A04 The public tug of war among Democrats this week over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. underscores the conflicting pressures facing Democratic leaders as they try to satisfy a growing cadre of activists anxious to battle President Bush while avoiding the appearance of being captives of their most vocal constituencies. The debate over what to do about Roberts is the latest in a series of disagreements over the past three years pitting the party's Washington-based leaders against traditional liberal advocacy groups or the newer world of grass-roots activists stitched together through e-mail and Web logs. The disputes reflect the frustration and uncertainty of a party that has been routed from power in all three branches of government during the Bush years. There have been disagreements over policy, with widespread anger among activists at Democrats who backed Bush's tax cuts and voted for the war in Iraq. There are also abiding tensions over what political strategy might be most effective in carrying the party back to power. Some elected officials, according to critics, have been slow to appreciate how the power balance in the Democratic coalition has shifted -- away from established interests and toward citizen activists who tend toward a more aggressive brand of politics. Party leaders in Washington trying to manage this unruly alliance as they prepare for Roberts's confirmation hearings face a delicate choice, according to party strategists and other analysts. They can risk heading into the 2006 midterm elections with a demoralized base. Or they could potentially turn off swing voters, who may view Bush's nominee in less ideological terms and could recoil at a party they perceive as driven by die-hard activists. Rank-and-file Democrats "want the Washington party to fight every day on every issue and to fight more effectively and better," said Simon Rosenberg, co-founder of the New Politics Institute, a think tank for progressive politics and new technology. "The truth is, it's going to be hard to fight and win every battle. . . . It's finding that right balance that's going to be the art of keeping our coalition together over the next few years." Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, said signs of passivity among Democratic elected leaders on Roberts's nomination were causing genuine distress among activists. "Swing voters aren't very focused on the court," she said, "but contributors and activists are, and think it's an issue that doesn't play a prominent enough role." Sizable Democratic support for Roberts's confirmation, she added, would be "very detrimental" for party morale. Senate leaders initially adopted a go-slow approach toward Roberts's nomination. That reflected a strategic decision by Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) that kept lawmakers publicly neutral on the nomination but that, as more information about Roberts's record became known, caused considerable unhappiness within the party. After representatives of several liberal advocacy groups complained Tuesday about what they regarded as a flaccid strategy, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), the party's longtime liberal leader, and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the top-ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, issued blistering statements criticizing Roberts's record. They said it is so conservative that it is far outside the ideological mainstream. Yesterday, conservative interest groups and some Republican leaders condemned Kennedy and Leahy, saying they were letting the groups lead the party. "Someone needs to remind Senators Kennedy and Leahy that their constituents are the American people, not far-left third-party groups in Washington," Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman said in remarks prepared for delivery in West Virginia and released by his office in Washington. The divide between the Washington Democratic establishment and the party's activists first manifested itself in 2002, when the activists angrily denounced congressional Democrats for refusing to make Bush's tax cuts an issue in that year's midterm campaigns. Democratic leaders feared that a campaign to roll back Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans could hamper their efforts to win House seats in more rural or conservative districts. But activists saw it as a betrayal of the party's traditional positions on fiscal responsibility and tax fairness. The fissure became a chasm after the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to go to war against Iraq -- supported by most congressional Democrats but opposed by many grass-roots activists. The disgust with what was seen as a submissive Washington-based leadership helped launch the presidential campaign of former Vermont governor Howard Dean and first signaled the growing strength of an Internet-based movement of activists who intended to make their voices heard in Washington. Earlier this month, another quarrel broke out over the party's tactics in a special House election in Ohio, in which Democrat Paul Hackett came within 5,000 votes of upsetting Republican Jean Schmidt in an overwhelmingly GOP district. Hackett enjoyed strong support from progressive bloggers, who helped him raise more than $400,000, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did not put money into the race until the final weekend. Some grass-roots activists complained bitterly that the DCCC had missed an opportunity to score a stunning upset. The worlds of the bloggers and of the liberal advocacy groups are different, but both share concerns that the Washington-based leadership's strategy may condemn Democrats to permanent minority status. There are several theories explaining why Reid chose the strategy he did on Roberts. The most prevalent is that because Reid had warned Bush against nominating several judges with more ideologically conservative records than Roberts, he felt hamstrung when the president selected Roberts, whose record was far less distinctive. Another is that because Reid opposes abortion, he has been reluctant to lead a fight against Roberts. Reid spokesman Jim Manley rejected those suggestions, saying Roberts will not get a free ride from Senate Democrats. "It's ridiculous to suggest that anyone is going to get an easy time," he said. Some activists said they hope next month's showdown over Roberts will prove Manley correct. Ben Brandzel, advocacy director for MoveOn.org's political action committee, predicted: "Ultimately, I think the case is going to be pretty clear and compelling, and there's going to be an opportunity for Democrats to show where they stand."