“‘The President wants Gonzales. That’s what is dragging this thing out. They’re sending out people to say he is conservative as if by telling us that enough we will say,“‘sure, he really is one of us.” That is not going to happen.’”
Indeed. I appreciate the President’s loyalty to his pal, but unless he’s thinking he’ll put Gonzales up as a sacrificial lamb he believes will be filibustered—and I doubt that he is—this would be an enormous mistake. Perhaps the President is heartened by recent high profile nods given Gonzales by a few prominent social conservatives, I don’t know. But my gut tells me that the President will lose a lot of his support unless he puts forward a small government conservative who has a clear judicial philosophy.
I’ve argued before that from what I’ve learned about Gonzales (and I’m far from an expert, so take all this with a grain of salt), he’s a political animal, and in that way is very much like Sandra Day O’Connor (whose major fault was her well-intentioned—but no less inappropriate—attempts to act as a compromiser rather than a Justice; which is how we end up, for instance, with her rulings on affirmative action, which make no legal sense so far as I can tell).
The appointment of Gonzales would mean that the President has moved the Court exactly nowhere. And that, I’m afraid, would be his conservative legacy. It will also, I’m quite certain, erode his support from many non-social conservatives who would rather take our chances with a Constitutionalist than with someone who will act like a judicial activist on key “conservative” social issues (porn, abortion, drugs).
(h/t Allah)
Ugh.
I’m all for intellect over ideology, so I’m hoping it’s McConnell.
Anybody read Ann Coulter’s latest column? Spot on this subject, really.
Bush is one bad Supreme Court nomination from really chipping away at his base of support. We’ve swallowed a lot in order to support a decent man who’s fairly good on the War, but dammit we’ve got a right to expect movement on at least one or two domestic agenda items. And I mean movement towards achieving those objectives, not away.
This will put a nail in it for me. The Republican leadership has gone beyond infuriating and moved into the realm of irrelevant.
They refuse to hit back and counter the lefts “culture of corruption†theme.
They not only jump on, but actually take the lead, on the blame Mike brown Bandwagon. They give Blanco a pass.
They sit back and allow the Pelosi’s, Kennedy’s, Feinstein’s, Schumer’s, Clintons, Boxer’s, Kerry’s, Durbins … to get their talking points out with nary a word of defense.
They sit back and defend pork barrel spending because their constituents want pet projects in an election year.
They act as if there is a race to see if they can outspend all previous administrations in the name of compassionate conservatism.
They turn their backs illegal immigrants and vilify those Americans who dare exercise their American right and step in where the spineless weenies won’t.
The list goes on and on and on.
This is a travesty. Each and every one of these items is a betrayal to the conservative base. It opens the door for division and leaves a window for democraps to walk through it.
Personally I’d like to see a Michael Luddig or a Miguel Estrada (another person the republicans let hang out to dry). Someone who would be right in the face of the left. I am tired of seeing the leaders of my party do just the opposite.
Jeff,
I think you’re cracking the egg before it is laid. I have to give Bush more credit than what a Gonzales nomination would call for. I can not beleive that he would be so out of touch politically to do this.
I think this nomination is going to be a “stick it to the Dems” and is either going to be Estrada or Janice Rogers Brown.
Gonzales is simply not in the mix.
Now if I am wrong, not only will I be devastated because being wrong always devastates me, but I will have to become a vocal anti-administration lackey. The scales are barely balanced between “good” and “bad” right now – this would definitely tip them to “horrible”.
Hell, I’m a social (among other qualifiers) conservative, and the idea of Gozales becoming a US Supreme Court justice makes my skin crawl. Or any other judicial activist, regardless of their “social conservative” bona fides. I adamantly do not want legislation from the bench of any stripe, and I certainly don’t want another O’Connor on the court (which is the best Gonzales could hope to be).
TW: neither. Gonzales ain’t no real social conservative, neither.
Come on, guys – Bush has seen into his soul, so he knows Alberto is a man he trusts. Besides, aren’t connections how Bush got his job?
What is the point of nominating Miers, BTW? Will anyone notice she’s a woman since she looks so much like a man?
I doubt that it’s Gonzales.
If it is, I will be very, very disappointed, though not nail-in-the-coffin disappointed. My current assessment is that Bush is good on the war, spotty on most other things but with a few good points. A Gonzales nomination would be a sufficient blot to erase several good points.
What good is it to have a President who temporarily disdains the UN, if he’s going to install a justice who will permanently kowtow to internationalism?
Last I checked, it was votes.
“What is the point of nominating Miers, BTW? Will anyone notice she’s a woman since she looks so much like a man?”
Isn’t it nice to hide behind a keyboard, SP, so that no one can remark on your own looks? Are you so completely devoid of any substantive thought on this issue that you have to make a five-year-old’s argument (ie, “Yeah, well, you’re ugly!”) about it? Bravo, SP, bravo.
A Gonzales nomination is the worst possible situation: a non-conservative non-Constitutionalist who has plenty of political liabilities that will sink his nomination without 100% GOP support in the Senate (which he won’t get).
Personally, though, I think it’s a head fake, and it’ll be someone else.
TW: enough. As in, enough Gonzo already.
Have you people not been paying attention for the past six years? This is a head fake. People will get so wound up fretting about Gonzales that the real appointee will take them completely by surprise.
Ben, I swear I didn’t read your comment before posting mine.
Oh, so he just happened to wake up one day and find out he was the Republican nominee? That his last name being “Bush” didn’t have a little to do with it? (As well as, I might add, pretty much everything else he has been associated with in his life.) For crying out loud, Brown was the former roommate of Joe Allbaugh. That’s some resume!
At least with the Reagan White House, it was occasionally about your ideas, and not who you knew.
Oh, so you were coming to this blog to find substantive thoughts in the comments thread? How about this one: Miers seems like a perfectly capable in-house lawyer, but not in a million years does that make her qualified to be on the Supreme Court. She could have a brilliant legal mind for all we know. But she’s be picked because she was an insider, they could say they nominated a woman, and she’d have even less of a paper trail than Roberts. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d be more worried about how she’d actually *judged* and not how her nomination, which will be a non-event a year from now, goes.
With that said, I just don’t see her as the nominee.
Hmmmm.
“This will put a nail in it for me. The Republican leadership has gone beyond infuriating and moved into the realm of irrelevant.”
Not really. The GOP leadership has drunk the kool-aid of “the big tent”. The idea being that increasing the number of moderates in the GOP will sufficiently offset the influence of conservatives that the GOP can simply ignore conservatives completely. As quite a few people have stated: where are conservatives going to go?
We’ve been seeing the symptoms of this for the past 5 or so years now as the GOP has abandoned nearly every single aspect of conservative ideology. As long as conservatives blindly vote for Republicans they’ll be held hostage just as surely as the African-American crowd is by the Democrats.
*shrug* If you don’t agree then list all of the things that the GOP has done for conservatives in the past 5 years vs the issues the GOP hasn’t moved on.
And please don’t include Terri Schiavo. She’s *dead* after all.
There’s no way in hell he nominates someone who isn’t a fire-breathing, abortionist-jailing, Dobson-approved conservative.
Best guess is Edith Jones, who is about as close as Phyllis Schlafly as a potential SCOTUS nominee can get.
I don’t think that it’s a matter of Republicans blindly voting for Republicans in sheep’s clothing. I think it comes down to choice, the worse of 2 evils. (As you pointed out, what choice do we have).
Don’t get me wrong, I’d be hard pressed to vote for a lib; I’d rather eat a bag of fire ants. But that can only work for so long.
This is why the SCOTUS nominee is so important. The wrong choice here would be a big blow to the base. Anyone less than a strict constructionist would be horrendous. Stevens is no spring chicken and we could always get another Ginsburg; especially considering what the radical left would likely resort to if they ever came into the majority.
My fear is of disenfranchisement creep at a time when the margins are narrow. We can’t afford that. This is where the leaders need to step in rather than duck and cover.
You say that as if it were a bad thing.
I hear this argument all the time w/r/t Court nominees. Can someone explain to me what’s to be gained by a head fake?
2006 is the key here. If Bush alienates his base–which is down to pretty much the hardcore social conservatives (JG being the exception rather than the rule), then plenty of Republicans will be staying at home in November 2006.
Allah –
A name gets leaked. Everybody gets all wound up about the name. The opposition, in particular, spends a lot of time and energy doing research and marshalling arguments against the prospective nominee.
Eventually, the real nominee gets named, it takes everyone by surprise. The opposition, who have made themselves look silly over the head fake don’t have the time, energy or credibility to find anything damning on the real nominee.
Addendum: Is this effective? I’m not sure. What I do know is that Bush does it all the time.
Mary Katherine Ham over at Wizbang is saying that Priscilla Owens has withdrawn her name from consideration and Red State is reporting that Corrigan and Alito have been the buzz.
More rumors to fuel the weekend fires and keep all of you in the North warm and cozy.
If it’s Gonzalez, hell I’ll filibuster.
I don’t get it, why is it that the Democrats can basically nominate judges that are to the left of Marx, like Ginsburg, and they get passed 95-0 (or whatever she got approved as), while if Republicans try to nominate someone who is actually conservative, but not a far right militar member nut sort (ie, the right equivalent of Ginsburg) they have no chance?
Why can’t the Republicans actually try to fight for once, instead of always rolling over to the democrats and moderates