Posted on 12/26/2004 3:08:49 PM PST by Aetius
.........To the extent that the vote was a mandate for any social issue, it was a repudiation of gay marriage, not a vindication of restrictions on the right to choose.
Indeed, voters oppose courts' imposing gay marriage for the same reason that they oppose a reversal of Roe vs. Wade – they do not support it when judges try to impose their own views on the social consensus. Just as most voters want marriage to remain strictly heterosexual, so most want abortion to continue to be legal, albeit with restrictions. While parental notification and consent, restrictions on late abortions and limitations on Medicaid funding all meet with popular approval, the voters will treat very unkindly any effort to reverse the essential findings of Roe.
If President Bush nominates a Supreme Court justice who is a conservative in the mode of Sandra Day O'Connor or Anthony Kennedy, he will meet with a broad public level of support. But if he tries to add another knee-jerk reactionary to the court – and jams the nomination through by changing the rules to block a Democratic filibuster – he will shatter the national moderate consensus that impelled his re-election.
The nation will not tolerate seeing an electoral victory impelled by terrorism hijacked to put another William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas on the court. If Bush tries it, he will not be able to govern effectively for the balance of his term.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
By the way, you're agreeing with a twenty-year Clinton operative. What does that tell you?
It tells me that I don't just follow any one line. I believe what I believe. Just as you do.
Fine, but let those states that would ban it - - Louisiana and South Dakota, for example -- do so. In those states, hearts and minds have already been changed.
Add Utah to that list of states where hearts and minds are already there. Probably other deep South states, too.
Not according to the exit polls that found "values" as the top-ranking issue.
If exit polls were correct, Kerry would be President. By the way, I'm not saying that gay marriage didn't play a big part, it did. But not abortion.
In your dreams.
If you were right, the Democrats wouldn't be talking about "changing their image" on abortion -- and even possibly making a pro-lifer (Roemer) their next chairman. They understand that abortion is a key "values" issue that moves millions of voters, and that has played a big part in sending their party to electoral Siberia.
MY only point is, there are places where hearts and mninds have already been changed - - and Roe v Wade should be overturned, so those states can protect unborn children, as their citizens wish them to do. By the way, these states - Utah, the deep south, the Dakotas, are also the ones that gave Bush the biggest margins of victory of any states. He and the GOP owe it to them to free them from the constraints of Roe v Wade.
No Dems are talking about outlawing abortion. They're talking about rational things ... the things we've always talked about. Parental notification, no partial-birth abortion, etc. Things most sane people agree on.
Reality vexes you, I see.
Look, I was responding to your assertion that abortion didn't play a significant factor in the election. That assertion is wrong - - and the proof that it is wrong is that the Dems are trying to move right on the abortion issue. But all that aside, the GOP must deliver on a judiciary that will reverse Roe v Wade (if not explicitly then in practical essence) and allow Bush-favoring states such as the Dakotas to roll back abortion, as their residents desire. In South Dakota, for instance, abortion may have been the number 1 issue used by Thune against Daschle. Do some googling and check it out. Your insistence that pro-life isn't a decisive element in the GOP's rise to majority status, is simply wrong. And because it's wrong, the GOP has to deliver on the issue.
Thanks to the mandate that tens of millions of social conservatives earned by getting President Bush re-elected, it will be.
This is good.
If you're not pro-life, just become a Democrat! They agree with you and Morris.
:o)
Cite me a poll that backs that up. Not one funded by an anti-abortion organization. A real poll about what people think about overturning Roe V. Wade. I really am curious.
That's a funny thing to say, being that the reality of the situation is that abortion is legal.
November 30, 2004
President Bush and Roe v. Wade
Public favors restrictive view of abortion rights, but not Roe v. Wade reversal
by Jeffrey M. Jones
With President George W. Bush possibly in a position to appoint one or more new justices to the U.S. Supreme Court in his second term, the fate of the Roe v. Wade decision establishing a constitutional right to an abortion is being debated. Bush faces a difficult task in trying to balance his desire to reward his political allies yet not acting against the will of the American people. While Americans generally oppose an unrestricted right to an abortion, several polls have shown a consistent majority opposition to overturning the Roe v. Wade decision. Most conservatives and regular churchgoers are in favor of reversing Roe.
This sounds right to me. What do you think?
Could someone help me out here? I thought that judicial nominees are confirmed by "advice and consent" of the (majority) of the Senate. There is nothing in the rules that says that the nominee needs more than 51 votes.
Then the Democrat minority of this Senate decided to create an unwritten rule of their own: We will fillibuster your nominee so that you have to have 60 votes in order to get the nominee confirmed. Add to the mix a spineless Republican majority unwilling to take them up on their fillibuster threat and voila! You need cloture to get your nominee through.
Apparently this stunt hadn't been tried before? Just as there is no rule codifying this tactic, there is likewise no rule to prohibit it. The Dem minority has been getting away with this under the radar.
Is it not the Democrats who have manipulated an unofficial "unfair revision" of the rules here? The Republicans now have to actually clarify what "advice and consent" means as a result of the Democrats machinations.
I love how Morris' logic has the Republicans as the ones jacking around with the rules because they are being forced to spell out "advise and consent" as it has been understood until Leahy and friends decided to eff with it.
Well, that's my understanding of it anyway...
Since the Congress and the President, as institutions, are unwilling to challenge the Sup Court and its various power grabs, I am for anything that results in getting enough good judges on the federal bench who don't suffer from a king-complex.
If it takes changing the rules, then so be it. The only downside would be that a future Dem president would also have that lower bar to get their judges through. But I'm of the opinion that the President, no matter who it is, deserves to have his appointments get an up or down vote from the full Senate. For better or worse, its an accord that should be granted to any President. And its not like the GOP would go to the mats to stop a far-leftie like Ginsburg or Breyer anyway.
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