Posted on 04/04/2012 3:53:35 PM PDT by SoConPubbie
Mitt Romney embarrassed himself yet again regarding his record in Massachusetts in last night’s debate. Globe:
Asked during the debate why only one fourth of the judges he appointed were Republican, Romney cast the council as an obstruction to conservative agenda.
“They go before something known as the Governor’s Council,” Romney said. “It consists of, I believe, seven members [actually it's eight, plus the Lt. Gov. -ed.], all of whom are elected Democrats. And so to be able to get my appointments through, I had to have people of both parties. And the people I put forward, all were individuals who I vetted very carefully to make sure they would follow the rule of law.” …
The body is often maligned and even mocked, more because of its members’ sometimes strange antics than any partisan agenda. The council is not known to vet judicial candidates based on party affiliation. At most, and especially more recently, members ask about political donations in hopes of preventing patronage. In addition, the council seldom rejected applicants during Romney’s tenure.
Of course, Romney’s claim is nonsense. I’m no great fan of the Governor’s Council, but the Globe is quite right to note that one thing they have generally not been is overtly partisan. The notion that the Governor’s Council would have started rejecting judicial nominees if there were too many Republicans among them, simply because they were Republicans, is more than a bit absurd. And Romney of course has no evidence to substantiate what he’s saying.
Closer to the mark are the comments, in the same article, of BMGer Dan Winslow, who spent two years running Romney’s judge-picking operation:
Romney’s first chief legal council, Daniel B. Winslow, who served from 2002 to 2004, established a non-partisan process for vetting judges through the Judicial Nominating Commission that was touted as a national model, because the primary application was judged blindly. That meant name, race, gender, and party affiliation, were not known during the initial review. Party affiliation was never a consideration, he said.
“People with political agendas really aren’t suitable for judgeships,” said Winslow, a former district court judge who is now a Republican legislator from Norfolk.
Winslow said that during the two years he served in the administration, the major reason Romney had few Republican appointments was a result of the talent pool.
“The fact is that there simply aren’t a lot of conservative lawyers in Massachusetts who were available for judgeships,” he said. “The pool of applicants was very low in many respects.”
Dan is trying to be kind to his former boss, but he undercuts Romney’s claim pretty severely in that passage. According to Winslow, the problem wasn’t the Governor’s Council. The problem was that most of the qualified applicants ended up not being Republicans.
Hilariously, though, apparently Romney had no trouble finding “conservative lawyers who were available for judgeships” once Winslow had moved on and Romney got rid of that pesky blind vetting process.
Near the end of Romney’s term, in 2006, he stripped the Judicial Nominating Commission of many of its powers, allowing his administration to put a more direct stamp on the judiciary, as he prepared to run for president.
What a sad joke this man is.
The “get-a-long” guy will be appointing so many liberal justices that it will make our heads explode.
Romney will not decrease federal givernment he will re-arraigned it..
You know make some of it actually “WORK”...
He is a UNION stooge.. “ringer”.. Shill.. stealth big givernment republican..
Republicans have been “rope-a-doped”.. tricked.. bamboozled..
AND they will deserve what they will get..
The author of this piece is an idiot. He wrote an article that contradicts itself.
In part I, the article says the Governor’s Council is basically a rubberstamp.
“I’m no great fan of the Governor’s Council, but the Globe is quite right to note that one thing they have generally not been is overtly partisan”
Then in Part II, the article says the Governor’s Council needed to be abolished for Romney to appoint conservative judges.
“Near the end of Romney’s term, in 2006, he stripped the Judicial Nominating Commission of many of its powers, allowing his administration to put a more direct stamp on the judiciary, as he prepared to run for president. “
mitt romney
Who gives a crap? Either way you slice it Romney had a way to appoint conservatives and he DIDN'T until he was preparing his presidential run, around the same time he became pro-life and began his flip-flop crusade.
I'm not looking forward to so-called conservatives bending over backwards to defend this RINO just because he had an "R" stamped on his name by the out-of-touch elites in the party. Especially when people like you are going to do it by attacking fellow conservatives with baseless and pointless attacks when they are just trying to expose the truth about the fraud named Mitt Romney. If you're going to support Romney, just face it and admit you're picking what you think is the lesser of two evils. Don't try to pretend that there isn't a Mt. Everest-sized pile of criticism to level against this limp, liberal poser from the conservative point-of-view. If this guy is elected and the rank-and-file start defending him when he makes one liberal move after another, that will be the end of the Republican party for real. If the party goes liberal, it will be torn asunder and be sent to the junk heap with the Whigs.
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