We Created John Roberts, Not The Other Way Around (Answering "Bushbashers' Thread of Penance Vanity)

Rogue yam has a vanity going on tonight: "Bushbashers' Thread of Penance (Vanity in Re:SCOTUS)"...right here:

It's a We Really Do Know A Whole Lot More About These Things Than You Squishy Doubters Do.

But as long as we're indulging in completely unfounded speculation tonight, let's flip the premise. Rogue's premise is: Because the kind of nominee we said would be nominated WAS nominated, we must have been right all along.

What if there is another operable premise? Try this: Because we said we would not accept a "consenus nominee," we must have affected the selection.

Many of us fretted and stressed and worried and wailed about the "wrong nominee" being sent up. I was right out in front, hitting extremes, first with my vanity on how I'd vote for Hillary (and abandon the Repubs) if he let us down...ya know, I'm not gonna link it; and hope nobody ever digs it up. I got my ass kicked, royally. I was taken to task, and beat up, and I got religion (wherein I pulled back my possible vote for Hillary, but said I would nevertheless stop supporting Repubs if a "consensus" nominee were chosen).

Then I indulged the other extreme, with my fantasy nominee announcement speech vanity:

And there were many, many other threads, and hundreds if not thousands of posts, on the subject of the SC in the last few weeks.

So the wise fathers among you may be surprised by this:

I'm not sure you were right.

I think it's entirely possible that:

We created this guy, John Roberts--those of us who spoke up, and made certain we were heard.

I think we got one of the best nominees we might have hoped for, because we let the powers know what we expected.

We did it by saying loud and clear that we expected the kind of nominee Bush said he would give us when he campaigned, and that there'd be hell to pay if we didn't get what we want.

We KNOW he said what he said about SC nominees when campaigning in 2000, but that's a long time ago. This is not for a second to say that he is "dishonest," for I am a big Bush fan myself. But things change. And if they don't fully change...they can "evolve."

We did it, I will always believe. We did it over the last 30 years, and we did it over the last 30 days.

Do you really think the president's people were NOT monitoring FR and the rest of the blogosphere and alternative media, for sentiment among the base? We let them know in no uncertain terms that a "consensus" nominee would be taken as a betrayal; I lost count of the number of times people declared (and certainly not only on FR), this would cost them in the '06 elections, and the '08s, too.

Some (Rogue among them) said, Just wait, just wait, be patient (as if we were little children), he's a man of his word, etc. Fine, I'm not saying he's not, as I said above. But every once in a while an issue comes along that is too damned important to "wait and see," and you have to get proactive. We did, you didn't. Because if you wait for an outcome like this, then you don't like it, it's too late.

Of course, we'll probably never know (or not know for a long time), how much the "voices from the right" held sway over the President in this choice, but those of us who raised those voices would rather wonder if we perhaps spoke too loudly, rather than ask ourselves, Why didn't we just open our mouths?

No regrets. And no intention of sewing acrimony or dissent. Just tossing out another "dynamic."

We all won, tonight.

So Bush was going to pick someone in complete denial of his own much-repeated promise to choose a conservative...but he heard a couple FReepers bitching and changed his mind? And when did this happen, around noontime while he was meeting with the Indian dude?

Some people will go a long way to get out of saying "OK, I was wrong." You can usually detect them by the use of a variation of the line "We're ALL winners here."

Real men and women step up and say "Yes, I was wrong and you were right." What is this, FreeUnderground???? ;)

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