Dear Jeff Fuller,
A long, tough slog, but ultimately, it doesn't make me think that Mr. Romney will fight hard for conservative nominees to the United States Supreme Court.
Here's why:
"He has navigated uber-liberal MA politics as well as can be expected and has definitely had to 'pick his battles' (and restricting abortion laws and preventing gay judges from being on low-level criminal courts were not at the top of his list of battles he took on)"
In that he doesn't see shaping the courts in Massachusetts as one of the battles worth picking, I'm not filled with confidence that, overwhelmed with other important issues should he become president, he'll be particularly concerned with this one.
The false dichotomy you (and he) set up between picking judges for lower courts and judges for the state's top court suggests that the governor might not fully understand that ultimately, his picks for the top court will be heavily influenced and partially determined in large part by who is on the lower courts. That's just as alarming as his decision to "pick his battles" elsewhere.
The problem for Gov. Romney is that he has a long history as a "personally opposed" pro-abort. Pro-lifers figured out years ago when Gov. Cuomo first tried this garbage that personally opposed-pro-aborts are entirely and completely useless to the cause of protecting the lives of the unborn in law.
It's not clear whether the governor is trying to claim that he's always been, really, a pro-lifer, or whether he's now claiming to have had a conversion on the issue.
I understand that the governor thinks that it was necessary to be a pro-abort to run for governor in Massachusetts. I also understand that now he believes it's necessary to be a pro-lifer to run for the Republican nomination for president.
It would help the governor to pick a story and stick to it. Either he's been a crypto-pro-lifer who lied to the people of Massachusetts to get elected governor, or he's had a rather dramatic conversion experience (going from believing that abortion is a constitutional right to believing that the law should protect the unborn is a rather dramatic shift). Maybe he'd been brainwashed previously? ;-)
At the very least, it may make the governor look a little less like an opportunist, if he can pick a story and keep it straight.
sitetest
Sitetest,
I'm really not trying to play "last word" here, but . . .
You said: "the governor might not fully understand that ultimately, his picks for the top court will be heavily influenced and partially determined in large part by who is on the lower courts."
Explain please . . . I'm really not following you completely.
You said: "In that he doesn't see shaping the courts in Massachusetts as one of the battles worth picking,"
Maybe you were unaware, but he's done a huge job reforming the judicial nominating procedure in MA! The reason he could get through 9 Republicans to only 13 Dems is because he completely reformed the system to make nominations "blind" initially to the committee.
"Romney won praise in the legal community when he replaced regional judicial nominating committees that were viewed as politically tainted with a centralized Judicial Nominating Commission. The commission considers applicants using a ''blind" first phase of the selection process that removes names from applications in an attempt to ensure the candidates will be judged on their merits."
When the Committee has approved of somebody's application based on qualifications without being able to know who they are or their political leanings, they would look pretty silly to backtrack.
Also, I guess you are choosing to "not believe" Romney nor the Democrats on the council when they both say that Romney would eye strict constructionists for higher posts.
The governor said that, so far, he has had few chances to appoint judges to the highest state courts, where his criteria would change to include ''strict construction, judicial philosophy"
"Peter Vickery, one of the Democrats on the Governor's Council, says he believes Romney and Moore would seek far more conservative jurists if a vacancy were to pop up on the Supreme Judicial Court"