Posted on 01/15/2006 7:08:47 AM PST by KCRW
Disheartened by the administration's success with the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., Democratic leaders say that President Bush is putting an enduring conservative ideological imprint on the nation's judiciary, and that they see little hope of holding off the tide without winning back control of the Senate or the White House.
In interviews, Democrats said the lesson of the Alito hearings was that this White House could put on the bench almost any qualified candidate, even one whom Democrats consider to be ideologically out of step with the country.
That conclusion amounts to a repudiation of a central part of a strategy Senate Democrats settled on years ago in a private retreat where they discussed how to fight a Bush White House effort to recast the judiciary: to argue against otherwise qualified candidates by saying they would take the courts too far to the right.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Come November and the elections, they'll paint Alito and Roberts as extreme right wingers. They'll concentrate on Abramoff scandals, Bush's so-called usurpation of power, spying on phone calls, etc.. (The imperial presidency.) One pundit said recently on Fox that some 15 congressional seats were up for grabs, but that dems had a realistic chance for only 7 of them. The republicans would retain control unless the dems can paint all of them as crooks. Dem strategists are plotting to do just that.
That idiot in the WH whooped 'em agin.
And I have one word for those Dem strategists: Kelo.
The Democrats are in a bind on this, as many of us tried to tell some of the more nervous types here during the Miers near-debacle. People kept saying President Bush needs to nominate a stealth candidate with unknown views and no record of standing firm on the Constitution because the Democrats would Bork a truly great nominee.
But they can't Bork a nominee when they don't control the Senate, and may not even be able to if they did. Borking only works for sure when the Democrats control the Senate AND when there's a liberal media monopoly. Bork was successfully Borked because when he was nominated there was no FOX News, no conservative talk radio, no internet, and limited cable penetration.
Yes, the Democrats controlled the Senate when Bork came up, which helped the left, but they also controlled the Senate when Thomas was nominated a few years later. But the vicious smear of Thomas failed. Why? Because by then cable was more deeply ingrained in our culture and people actually watched the hearings, plus by then the Rush Limbaugh-driven talk radio revolution had blossomed. The Rats smeared Bork and there was no way for Bork to fight back. Not so for Thomas
It's even worse for the Rats now with FOX News, the internet, and other outlets which have broken the liberal media monopoly the Rats need to Bork someone. Imagine Teddy Kennedy's CAP smear being unleashed in the mid-80's. It would have gotten enormous traction since anyone trying to counter his lies would run into a brick wall trying to find an outlet to get their message to the public. All the public would hear would be CBS, ABC, NBC, Time, Newsweek, the NY Times, AP, and UPI repeating the smear over and over. But in 2006 the smear was exposed as a smear within hours. By the next morning, millions upon millions of Americans knew that Ted was lying.
These hearings, which the Rats once benefitted from, are now detrimental to them. Most people, upon seeing the likes of Dick Durbin or Chuck Schumer grilling someone, will side with the person being grilled. The Rats have lost their media monopoly, which they relied on the spin the hearings their way. Today, people not only hear another spin from guys like Rush, but they see the hearings themselves. This is why Biden wants to scrap the hearings.
Those days are over.
We can all pray that the jerks at the New York Slimes get depressed enough to off themselves...
Traitorous Leftist bastards...
Semper Fi
The White House should be able to put ANY qualified candidate it wants on the court.
Agreed.
Yes, but that's to allow the Rats to avoid the very situation I described. Namely, the fact that people now watch the hearings and hear another spin on them as well.
If there are no hearings, the public won't see the nominee being mistreated, nor will the nominee be present to respond. Thomas, Roberts, and Alito all benefitted from being abused on national television by the arrogant, dishonest, and ignorant Democrat senators, and then responding in a manner the public liked.
Is there something wrong with putting a qualified candidate on the court?
This is exactly the result of the de-massification of the media that Alvin Toffler prophesized way back in 1979 in his book The Third Wave. Toffler said that as communications technologies improve, the hammerlock hold of information dissemination by the mass media will come to an end. The rise of conservative talk radio since the late 1980's, the rise of proprietary online services in the late 1980's then the public Internet since the middle 1990's, and the near-universal availability of cable TV has made it possible for people to do end-runs around the MSM.
You'd think the MSM would have learned that lesson after the Jayson Blair fiasco at the New York Times that brought down Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd there; the inability of Senator Kerry to stop the Swift Boat Veterans during the 2004 Presidential campaign, the Rathergate fiasco in September 2004, and fall of Eason Jordan at CNN late in 2004 has shown how woefully out of touch the MSM is nowadays.
Even with Alito it is still 5 liberals to 4 conservatives.
I call them "damnocrats."
I don`t think I suggested there was.
Not to be confused with dam no crats...
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