Posted on 09/06/2005 4:14:43 PM PDT by RWR8189
WITH JOHN ROBERTS sailing toward confirmation last week, President Bush had the O'Connor seat "won." The Court was set to move one click to the right (so to speak). Then Chief Justice William Rehnquist died. The president chose to move Roberts over to fill the Rehnquist slot--thereby re-opening the vacancy created by Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement.
One understands the attraction of Roberts as chief. But with this action, in one fell swoop, the president deprived himself and his supporters of the easiest argument for his next nominee: that surely a reelected conservative president is entitled to replace a conservative justice--Rehnquist--with another conservative.
So now everything rides on Bush's nerve. Is he willing to fill the O'Connor seat with a conservative, and can he then make an effective case for that nominee to the Senate and the country? Bush will have three huge advantages in such an effort--a 55-seat GOP Senate majority, popular support for a more restrained and conservative Court, and a plethora of well-qualified conservative candidates (consider Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell, Edith Jones, Priscilla Owen, Maura Corrigan, and Miguel Estrada, for starters). And there are in fact attractive arguments to be made for each of these candidates that go beyond the generic ones and that would make prospects for confirmation good.
So there is no good reason for Bush to flinch. But he could. He may be rattled by the criticism for mishandling hurricane Katrina, and he may think it would be better to avoid too big a fight over the Court. He's always wanted to nominate his attorney general, Alberto Gonzales--he likes him, is loyal to him, and would appreciate the symbolism of putting the first Hispanic on the court. So he might be sorely tempted to do so now.
Would any of his aides have the nerve to tell him that as Supreme Court jurists go, Gonzales would be mediocre--and not a solid bet to move the court in a constitutionalist direction? Would any of them have the nerve to explain to the president that a Gonzales nomination would utterly demoralize many of his supporters, who are sticking with him and his party, through troubles in Iraq and screw-ups with Katrina, precisely because they want a few important things out of a Bush presidency--and one of these is a more conservative court? Would any of them tell the president that risking a core item in the conservative agenda for the sake of either friendship, diversity, or short-term political spin, would be substantively wrong, and politically disastrous?
Maybe. And maybe Bush doesn't need all these reminders.
But even astute presidents occasionally make big mistakes. And one worrisome straw in the wind is the comment by Bush loyalist John Cornyn (R-Tex.) in today's Washington Post, who, according to the Post, thinks the nominee will likely be "a woman or a minority." Cornyn offered what the Post described as "a vigorous defense of Gonzales." "He would be a very good nominee and one that I would be happy to support," Cornyn said. "I've read about these concerns from some conservatives, and I really wonder where they are getting some of these strange ideas."
Yikes. One hopes Cornyn is just being polite to Gonzales and Bush. Or has he been asked to lay the groundwork for a Gonzales nomination? Did Cornyn talk with Karl Rove yesterday, between the Roberts announcement and his interview with the Post? If so, we conservative constitutionalists are in real trouble. More important, so is Bush.
William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard.
It will be fun over the next few weeks to watch another round of judge bashing. You just never know which side will have the most temper tantrums. I appreciate more information on important subjects like this, don't you?
The following is a good example of what can be found online:
"That statement by Quin doesn’t lower the level of concern about Judge Clement. Today, Quin wrote at http://www.confirmthem.com/?p=750#comments as follows:
IMPORTANT: I am becoming more and more comfortable with Joy Clement as a potential replacement for O’Connor. I’ve done some digging. Nothing flamboyant there, but just a good, solid jurist….Probably the most impressive thing about her record is this: As a district court judge, out of more than 1,300 opinions she authored, only 17 were reversed, partially reversed, vacated or even remanded….As a nominee, she won’t make conservative hearts go pitter-pat like, say, Clarence Thomas did. But she is indeed worthy of the highest court in the land."
O'Connor had told people she was going to retire in 2005 a year ago. Kristol used common knowledge to make himself look smart.
There were stories all over the place in the spring of 2004 that O'Conner was going to retire after the 2004 term. Then there were stories that President Bush asked her to stay until after the 2004 election so he would have more Republican votes in the Senate. She agreed and kept her word. There were posters here on FR trashing Bush for asking O'Conner to stay on an extra year. I remember taking flak for defending President Bush not wanting to try to get a justice confirmed in an election year.
The story about O'Conner agreeing to stay on until after the 2004 election was posted here on Free Republic.l.. more than once.
FR was where I learned about it more than a year before she retired. It was common knowledge.
I will not back down.
The judiciary was one of 2 central reasons for the reelection of Pres. Bush.
This past decade has been dedicated to making the supreme court at least a bit more conservative.
This nominee MUST be a conservative. Must. This is what all the hard work has been about. Whoever has aspirations for the next POTUS nomination from the Repub's better jump on this with both feet and insist on a conservative. They will win the base this way faster than any other route.
Frist, Santorum, Allen.....are you listening?
We are back to square one and not even sure how Roberts will turn out, W has to put up a strong conservative or risk losing his biggest supporters.
Remember that is was "conservatives" like Kristol who supported John McCain.
If everyone had that attitude we wouldn't have to worry about long lines at polling places.
I really think (not based on any real evidence) that Bush wants to nominate a Hispanic American to the Court
Thats why I fear the muppet.(alberto) I want best of breed. Hes boxed himself into a hispanic or woman which really irks me unless he goes for a headbanging conservative. I dont want any "deals" made at our expense....again....
Luttig and Jones are at the top of my list. I had Roberts right behind Luttig for the the first nomination. There are others who would be minimally-acceptable, but not Clement or Gonzalez.
If he doesn't come through on nominations, he's going to lose my support and that of his most ardent supporters, and then he'll be fed to the lions without a care from the right and amid much hoopla from the left.
So be it.
You're exactly right. I see no reason that the list of potential candidates would be any different for O'Connor's position now than it was several weeks ago. The selection work has already been done and Bush will be able to make the announcement immediately when the conditions are right.
Pro-abortion, gun-grabbing, pro-racial preferences - that's a real conservative for you! By that standard, Hillary Clinton is even more "conservative." Gonzales is a hack, nothing more - an affirmative action re-conquistador unfit to preside over a traffic court.
If we must have an "Hispanic" (a government-invented ethnic group) in order to genuflect before the altar of "diversity", Estrada has at least demonstrated that he shares some core values with the conservatives who voted for Bush.
FR was where I learned about it more than a year before she retired. It was common knowledge.
That wasn't the point on which Kristol was right. Most people knew she would retire soon. What Kristol said was that O'Connor would retire before Bill Rehnquist would. And he was right. None of the other talking heads guessed that except for him. They were all taken by surprise that O'Connor announced her retirement before Rehnquist. That was what Kristol got right.
Ted Olson my choice.
Please remember Barbara Olson in your prayers for the victims of 9-11 on Sunday. I still miss her very much.
Whereas, you *assume* he isn't.
This article is loaded with a bunch of tripe, I don't know where to begin.
O'Connor said she was going to retire at the end of the session.
The odds were about 99.9 to 0.01 that Rehnquist was not going to resign. When Kristal made the prediction the Chief Justice had been diagnosed for some time and he had not resigned. If a person diagnosed with terminal cancer does not resign at diagnosis, that person is not going to resign until death. People who have hopes of survival quit to devote all their faculties to survival. Those that accept death try to live and work as normally as possible until the day they die or become comatose.
A call to any oncologist or radiologist could have informed anyone what Rehnquist was going to do and how long he was very likely going to live. It was as predictable as the sun comes up in the morning and goes down at night.
Any analyst with a brain knows to call doctors to learn what a very sick person will likely do. To find out what an indicted person will do, call a good lawyer. To predict what a politician will do in any circumstance, call a good politician. To predict how a judge will rule call lawyers who have practiced before his bench. It ain't rocket science.
Anyone who wanted to know what was going to happen, could have easily did what Kristal did. The fact that few if any reporters did, only proves that most reporters are not very skilled or bright.
Kristol has a very bad track record. He is wrong a very large percentage of the time. If you plot what Kristal predicts you will find he just tends to take positions opposite to whatever most of the press is saying at the time he predicts. If he is right he makes a big deal of it. If he is wrong few, if any, remember and he never mentions it.
Most of the media are wrong about half the time. Kristol is wrong the other half.
He was right on O'Connor after she made her announcement to retire. He postulated in an article after her announcement like he heard it through some anonymous source just to make himself look smart.
The last time I heard Kristol get it wrong was when he said Bush blew it in the Presidential debates, including the last one where Bush cleaned Kerry's clock. Kristol sided with Mara Liasson, of all people.
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