Bush knows something that many conservatives will never learn. My father puts it this way: "You can't win a pi*s*in' contest with a polecat." Bush knows that there is nothing to be gained by engaging Patrick Leahy and Ted Kennedy in ideological debate. He wants to sidestep them, not score points on them.
What I find strange is that the same conservatives who have been in arms over the President's right to appoint judges for five years now believe that the Republic is threatened because the President has appointed a justice whom he knows extremely well, but who is not well known to Ann Coulter and the pundits at the National Review.
The other strange thing is the offence many people take at the idea of trusting Bush on this. If there is any issue on which Bush has earned trust, it's judicial appointments. He has up till now not faltered one single time, and yet these sore-toe conservatives will not give him any slightest benefit of the doubt. I really do think that this kind of nastiness will persuade many intelligent conservatives not to go into politics -- who needs this kind of vituperation from both the Left and the Right? And it's not just Bush -- people with long memories know that the same kind of people screamed the same kind of venom at Reagan. It's just gotten more hysterical, like everything else in our politics.
Good post!