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What Bush needed was a monster battle in the Senate, ending the nuclear option, not a stealth nominee.

If he wanted to get the base behind him and energized before 2006, he should have picked a strict constructionist, he has not done that here.

I agree completely.
After writing a blank check to America's most corrupt city, it's the base Bush needs to be worries about, not the Democrats. Maybe Karl Rove has been too preoccupied with the leak probe to be giving the President good political advice, because the Whitehouse has been tone-deaf lately.

However, One advantage for Bush by nominating a crony is that after 25 years, he knows her views and opinions intimately, though there is very little papertrail to give the Democrats any insight at all. I must disagree with you on the assertion that she is a "stealth candidate", because she isn't in the strictest sense, not like Souter, whom not even the President that nominated him knew who he was.

I think most people were really hoping for Luttig or one of the Ediths, or Janice Rogers Brown. That would have been a fight in the Senate, and one the Democrats would have lost.

What I dislike the most is Bush choosing a crony, and a rather unexciting one at that. Rightfully or wrongfully, It will undermine her legitimacy on the court for years to come, and most especially call into question her objectivity when hearing any case that may involve the Administration.

In a lot of ways the "crony" charge would probably be more effective in shaping public opinion than the usual "extremist, outside the mainstream" and "turn back the clock on women's rights, civil rights" type charges, as those have become predictable, comical cliches.

What blank check are you talking about? There is no "blank check" to New Orleans.

It will undermine her legitimacy on the court for years to come, and most especially call into question her objectivity when hearing any case that may involve the Administration.

That could be said of ANY Justice and the Administration under which he was appointed.