Posted on 07/02/2005 12:58:20 PM PDT by timpad
Any rhetorical nice-nice after the resignation of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was announced Friday will last about as long as a cascade of sparkling cinders from July 4th pyrotechnics.
Unless President Bush decides to surprise the nation and nominate a replacement who is anything but a proven ideological touchstone, he will be in for the fight that he deserves.
The coming confirmation debate will be of a magnitude unseen in many years, if ever. I'd guess thermonuclear, making the warm-up match earlier this year in the U.S. Senate look like a backyard barbecue.
We should be willing to be shocked by Bush taking another path, such as was suggested by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who observed that Bush has "the opportunity to unify the country."
Why should he start now?
And when was the last time we saw those better angels when it came to fulfilling the deal with the hard-right conservatives who powered his re-election? He almost certainly will dance with the girls that brung him.
Bush meant to send a message when he was asked in the 2000 campaign about what sort of judges he might nominate. He knew what he was doing when he cited the two most conservative justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as his template.
He has carried through, relentlessly, as he has cut-and-pasted the roster of the Federalist Society onto the federal judicial lineup.
The thought that most alarms the far right is that Bush might stumble into nominating someone who would turn out to be as fair-minded a judge as O'Connor — much less those other Republican-nominated justices who send them into paroxysms, John Paul Stevens and David Souter (the gift of Bush's father to the court), or increasingly agitated palpitations, Anthony Kennedy. ("He's from California, what do you expect," they mutter.)
You see, there is hope. And that's why archconservatives will be so vigilant in the walk-up to Bush's selection. But they'll be on no less guard than centrists and liberals. With O'Connor's announcement there instantly arose conspiracy theories about when Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who at 80 is five years older than O'Connor and ailing, might also retire.
Liberal blogger David Sirota posited "Karl Rove's Supreme Court strategy," suggesting there might be a White House feint in nominating an O'Connor replacement who would be modestly less objectionable than whomever Bush has in mind to succeed Rehnquist.
At any rate, it's fair to say that the short lists of prospects, unauthoritative as the lineups are, do not include incumbent judges who look too much like a question mark. The lists are larded with such battle-tested veterans of the values war as Texas-based U.S. appellate judges Edith H. Jones and Emilio Garza. If you want to toss in another Texas native, add Judge J. Michael Luttig of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Any of these seem prepared to overturn or drastically restrict Roe v. Wade faster than you can say "morning after pill."
The most interesting sideshow to watch Friday was how sparse were conservative Republicans in their legal praise for O'Connor, the first Supreme Court nominee of their patron saint, Ronald Reagan. On most of the cases that count, she has proved to be anathema to their narrow-minded view of the world and Constitution.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, will probably be made to answer by the right for her correct assessment that O'Connor's "tenure on the bench has set a new standard for jurisprudence."
With few exceptions — the 2000 presidential election decision that put Bush in the White House being chief among them — O'Connor developed into a justice who frequently set conservative teeth gnashing.
Odd as it may seem, given her political provenance, "the bottom line is that Justice O'Connor leans to the liberal side on the most divisive issues that come before the court," as the superb legal analyst Stuart Taylor Jr. says in the current issue of National Journal.
She was the fifth vote in a host of 5-4 decisions that kept the Dark Ages at bay. Time after time, O'Connor during much of her almost quarter-century on the high court was the deciding vote in cases that involved basic rights.
As People for the American Way said after her resignation was announced: "If she is replaced by someone who doesn't share her fair and impartial perspective" those cases are "in danger of being overturned."
When Bush called O'Connor after receiving her resignation letter, he told her: "For an old ranching girl, you turned out pretty good." He was right, but not for any reason he had in mind.
Bush also remarked: "I wish I were there to hug you."
So should we all.
Hines is a Houston Chronicle columnist based in Washington, D.C.
Bush could nominate Fidel Castro and the Democrats would still have a conniption about him being too far to the right. Their mindset these days is, "Whatever it is, we're against it."
Interesting how Bush is supposed to replace "moderate" Sandra Day O'Connor with another of her ilk, but when equally "moderate" Byron White's seat came up, Bill Clinton got to put bigtime liberal Ruth Bader Ginsberg in his place. Screw the Democrats and their demands.
He almost certainly will dance with the girls that brung him.
Well CragG are you gonna dance or just whine?
George Bush is gonna dance with us and he's going home with us too, not try and stup every slut in the place, like your
boy bill.
The H-Town liberal glad rag...is a sad testament to agenda driven, under educated, liberal jurnos with the only paper in town and a false sense of moral superiority.
Every chance I get to throw away a "CHRONicle"...I do so with glee. It's not worth recycling...
It's truly a POS!
Hines is a lefty Chronicle columnist, but at least he doesn't try to hide that fact and claim he's objective like the rest of their staff.
Who doesn't like dancing with the girls?
Hey Democrats... better go find yourselves some lead paint to cover yourselves with because no one wants to stand next to radioactive material once Frist deploys the nuculear option.
Trajan88
All this "mobilization" and "whining" that the 'RATS are doing proves one thing many of us have been saying all along. The Supreme Court is nothing but a bunch of wacked out activists. They "interpret" the Constitution to mean what THEY want it to mean. The intentions of the founders and writers of the Constitution are irrelevant. These "judges" are using their political ideaology to "interpret" the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court was never intended to have this much influence over how we live our lives in the United States. The Supreme Court is out of control and must be reined in. The people of the United States have rejected the Liberal DemocRATS so they have decided to use these unelected "judges" to sneak their Communist agenda into our daily lives and to write legislation.
True, but it's the only Liberal branch of gov't we have now. The Liberals have to keep it that influential, or they'll never get their policies implemented.
Americans have been voting more Conservatively in recent years. I don't know how strong those views are.
There are 10-15 Liberals in the Senate (from both parties) that stand between a Conservative Court and a Liberal one. It will be most interesting to track their political futures.
I just wonder how stupid the people of Houston must be to keep buying that commie rag, which so clearly despises every one of their values. Conservatives in Left-wing bastions such as New York and Washington successfully demand more ideologically diverse news. Hey, Texans, what gives?
Cragg Hines is so predictable. I cannot believe that the Houston Chronicle pays him money for the drivel he authors. What a joke.
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