Why are Republicans so awful at picking Supreme Court justices?

Washington Post ^ | 07/02/2012 | Marc A. Thiessen

[SeekAndFind]

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s decision to side with the court’s liberal bloc and uphold Obamacare raises an important question for conservatives: Why are Republicans so awful at picking Supreme Court justices? Democrats have been virtually flawless in appointing reliable liberals to the court. Yet Republicans, more often than not, appoint justices who vote with the other side on critical decisions.

Just compare the records over the last three decades. Democrats have appointed four justices — Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. All have been consistent liberals on the bench. Republicans, by contrast, have picked seven justices. Of Ronald Reagan’s three appointees (Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy) only Scalia has been a consistent conservative.

George H.W. Bush appointed one solid conservative (Clarence Thomas) and one disastrous liberal (David Souter). With George W. Bush’s appointments of Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Roberts, conservatives thought finally they had broken the mold and put two rock-ribbed conservatives on the bench — until last week, that is, when Roberts broke with the conservatives and cast the deciding vote to uphold the largest expansion of federal power in decades.

So Democrats are four-for-four — a perfect record. Republicans are not even batting .500.

[longtermmemmory]

I wonder if Congress can pass funding to say that no more than 2 clerks will come from the same law school.

[drpix]

Too many are $hiteaters. Case in point: those who took that $hit Roberts Obamacare decision and chose to make it into a sandwich by imagining it was something positive.

[x]

Liberals are a minority in the country, so they tend to stick together more.

They're also a majority at the top law schools and in the media, so liberals on the court get a lot of positive reinforcement from other elites.

And liberals like overturning laws they don't approve of. Justices like Rehnquist and Roberts are more conflicted about exercising that power.

[murron]

BINGO! Not only do we pick academics, we pick people who want to be liked by the bad people, like in high school when we wanted to be part of the clique. Also, on many occasions, when we put up our picks, the Senate is controlled by Democrats, so our limp-wristed Republican presidents put up judges who they think won’t “offend” the Dems and they can have easy confirmation. They remembered what happened with Bork and don’t want a repeat of that.

But when the Pubbies have control of the Senate with a Democratic President, our senators always let them go through without a fight. This is why we have Breyer and Ginsburg.

[YHAOS]

There aren’t many good ones to be found?

[Do Not Make Fun Of His Ears]

Still beating the Harriet Miers dead horse? Astounding.

“fanatical anti-immigration folks”

Really? So I guess you are soft on immigration?

[Digger]

Liberal presidents on the other hand pick the most liberal justices they can find because they know the Republican Senators like Dick Lugar will do the advice and consent thing and then vote for anybody the president chooses

So indirectly they are co-conspirators - a faction in this corrupt "Two-Party Cartel".

[drpix]

"I actually thought Harriet Miers would have been better, but people here attacked her and I don’t recall why. It might have been something in her past that triggered the fanatical anti-immigration folks..."

It was Alito not Roberts who was nominated after Miers was pulled. Do you think Miers would have been better than Alito?

And what exactly is "fanatical" when a people, who have been admitting over 1 million legal immigrants a year for decades, and granted 3 million illegals Amnesty 25 years ago, on the condition that the illegal invasion would then be halted - to receive only as "gratitude" unending invasion and demands for more amnesty - have had enough and say so?

But every invasion needs a fifth column to detract from a country's defenders.

[Will88]

I actually thought Harriet Miers would have been better,

It's pretty surprising how many have recently posted something similar to that. But Roberts was Bush's first SC nominee, and Miers was nominated for the second vacancy. Then when the uproar caused Miers to withdraw, Bush nominated Sam Alito who has proven to be a solid conservative, unlike Roberts.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

The article is based on a false assumption that GOP Presidents want conservative jurists.

The commie left Dem Presidents want commie leftist Marxist jurists, and they vet them in public and shove them down the throats of the gutless surrendering GOP.

The GOP Presidents are all NWO globalist elitest crooks who want socialist RINO jurists, and that is what they tend to give us. The don’t want conservatives. I was screaming at GW Bush to give us one of the far right jurists and instead he picks people with very little history so you can’t know really how they will vote.

Baby Bush and Daddy Bush did not want conservative jurists. They wanted jurists that would advance the New World Order.

So the author’s premise is false. The GOP Presidents got the globalist jurists they wanted.

[SeekAndFind]

No one would have predicted that John Roberts would move to the dark side when Dubya nominated him to the SCOTUS.

First of all, On May 10, 2001, Dubya nominated Roberts for a different seat on the D.C. Circuit, which had been vacated by James L. Buckley. The Senate at the time, however, was controlled by the Democrats, who were in conflict with Bush over his judicial nominees. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-VT, refused to give Roberts a hearing in the 107th Congress.

So, this Democrat opposition would have to given us the impression that Roberts was a conservative judge.

The GOP regained control of the Senate on January 7, 2003, and Bush resubmitted Roberts’s nomination that day. Roberts was confirmed on May 8, 2003, and received his commission on June 2, 2003. During his two year tenure on the D.C. Circuit, Roberts authored 49 opinions, eliciting two dissents from other judges, and authoring three dissents of his own.

In fact, While working as a lawyer for the Reagan administration, Roberts wrote legal memos defending administration policies on abortion.

As a lawyer in the George H. W. Bush administration, Roberts signed a legal brief urging the court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Conservatives, upon seeing his record, would have loved him ( and many did ).

When the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Roberts’s nomination, Ted Kennedy, Richard Durbin, Charles Schumer, Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein cast the dissenting votes.

This would have given Conservatives the impression that Roberts was a conservative feared by liberals.

Why am I mentioning this history?

Well, NO ONE, but NO ONE saw this move to the dark side coming. I personally thought that he was an excellent choice . I WAS WRONG !!

So, I don’t think we can blame Dubya for not being prescient.

[denydenydeny]

Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. All have been consistent liberals on the bench

Democrat appointees are apparatchiks, not jurists. They will NEVER vote against the Democrats on any key policy issue, ever. If Roberts had written that he was ruling in favor of Obamacare because the moon was made of green cheese, the liberals would all have concurred. They saw him coming.

[Salvation]

Awful?

[Salvation]

My son is an attorney. He speaks for his client. Why do yu say that is lying?

[Salvation]

Hey, you are calling my son, scum?

[BuckeyeTexan]

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