Senator Byrd Praises Bush Nominee

Opinion Times ^ | 7/22/05 | Jim PFaff

[HallowThisGround]

In an amazing turn of events. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-WV, is praising President Bush.

Washington Times: Sen. Robert C. Byrd, one of President Bush's harshest critics, has become an unlikely ally on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr.

"I said to him, 'I am shouting your name from the steeple tops for reaching out, reaching across the aisle,'?" the West Virginia Democrat reported after taking a phone call from Mr. Bush to discuss a replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

After Mr. Bush nominated federal Judge Roberts this week, Mr. Byrd again issued a statement praising the president. "I thank President Bush for reaching out to senators on both sides of the aisle as he worked to select a nominee for the court," Mr. Byrd said. "I hope that this bipartisan cooperation will continue as the confirmation process begins."

The senator's praise of Mr. Bush is turnaround from a year ago when the West Virginian accused Mr. Bush of being a "green and arrogant president" who went to war before exhausting diplomacy.

Regular readers of Opinion Times might be shocked to hear that I take him at his word--with a cynical vein to be sure. Sen. Byrd has no shame when it comes to playing the political game, but he does take kindly to being treated as an "Elder Statesman" and being simply asked for his opinion. And he wouldn't make these public statments if he didn't mean to be helpful to the President at some level. But let's moderate that statement a bit by reminding ourselves that there are always political calculations.

Mr. Byrd is up for re-election next year in a state that Mr. Bush won last year by 13 percentage points despite heavy campaigning by Democrats.

A poll conducted in May shows Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia Republican, three points behind Mr. Byrd even though Mrs. Capito hasn't announced that she will run against the old-guard senator.

"For Senator Byrd, desperate times require desperate measures," said Brian Nick, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "As recent polling shows him below 50 percent and in a dead heat against a prospective opponent, he'll apparently try anything."

The cynical vein I perceive in Byrd's comments has its origin in the fact that I don't underestimate the power of the polls in Sen. Byrd's statements. He's faces re-election in 2006 like many others, and he has to shore up his base. West Virginia is a very conservative state, and the results of the presidential eleciton there prove that people in the Mountaineer State want someone who stands up for moral values. Having worked in West Virginia extensively as a consultant, I have noticed something about the way Byrd connects with the voters there. There's the obvious: his renowned capability to obtain U.S. Government largesse for his state in the form of road construction and other projects. (Shelly Moore Capito herself was fond of saying at events she attended in 2004, "I'm sorry I was late, but I have made it a habit not to drive on roads named after Senator Byrd, so it took me a while to get here.") But the lesser known method he uses is to make himself out to be some sort of Christian Standard Bearer which shows up nationally in his self-described role as "Conscience of the Senate." The following excerpt from the Washington Times article illustrates this.

Mr. Byrd embraced the same judicial philosophy as the president in his memoir, "Child of the Appalachian Coalfields," released earlier this summer. In the book, he repeatedly blamed "liberal judges" and "activist judges" for many of the nation's problems.

"One's life is probably in no greater danger in the jungles of deepest Africa than in the jungles of America's large cities," he writes. "In my judgment, much of the problem has been brought about by the mollycoddling of criminals by some of the liberal judges who have been placed on the nation's courts in recent years."

Mr. Byrd essentially endorsed Mr. Bush's primary stated strategy for picking Judge Roberts and other judicial nominees. "The high court's share of the responsibility for our increasing lawlessness lies in two areas -- its zeal for bringing about precipitous social change, and its overconcern for the rights of criminals and its underconcern for the rights and safety of society," he writes.

Mr. Byrd detailed the advice he has given presidents about the importance of naming conservatives and strict constructionists to the bench.

"I urged President Nixon to appoint conservative jurists to the court," he recalls in the book. "I said that such a return to a conservative philosophy would be 'the greatest single service President Nixon could perform for his country.' I said that the court had hurt the United States with its rulings on school prayer and in criminal cases, and had given aid and comfort to subversives by refusing to bar communists from schools and defense plants."

He communicates this kind of information to the people of West Virginia through books like "Child of the Appalachian Coalfields" the title of which alone has the power to tug at the heart strings of every West Virginian.

It is possible, though, that the game's up. His presence at a MoveOn.org fundraiser which put hundreds of thousands of dollars into his 2006 Senate campaign did not go over well with many in the home state. This is relfected in the poll numbers against Rep. Capito. Though I have stated in a previous article that it is my belief Byrd will be re-elected in 2006, Byrd's modus operandi may be loosing its effectiveness. Will 2006 be the year it fails? There's a 40% chance it will in my opinion.

All the West Virginia political machinations are superfluous to the fact that Byrd is helping put a strict constitutionalist on the court and bolstering the President's effect on future Supreme Court decisions. This is one of the best effects of Byrd's complicity.

UPDATE: Thanks to MaxedOutMamma for the link.

[Fudd Fan]

ok, what is Sheets up to?

[Mo1]

ok, what is Sheets up to?

reelection??

I hear he's in a tight race

[HallowThisGround]

It may be a tight race. But one never knows in WV. I think it can be done, but no one of substance has yet emerged. Capito is one who could make a run. There are others. Got my ear to the ground and will update as I find out.

[Fudd Fan]

From what I've seen of Capito, I like her.

[linkinpunk]

Mr. Byrd is up for re-election next year in a state that Mr. Bush won last year by 13 percentage points

So there is still time to nominate Janice Rogers Brown so we can see him squirm.

[linkinpunk]

what is Sheets up to?

Byrd is happy that it was not a black nominee.

He is the only Senator in the history of the United States to vote againt BOTH black Supreme Court justices (Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas).