I think your analysis is wrong. Specter would have come around on Luttig. McCain would have been required to in order to preserve his 2008 run for president. Dewine took a lot of heat in Ohio so he would have fallen also.
Chafee, you're right about; however, we would have picked up at least one of the Maine sens. So we would have lost two Republican votes but would have picked up several Democratic votes.
Judiciary committee vote: 10-8, Senate vote 60-40 to confirm, maybe a little bit less.
This choice is horrible.
And no, I thought Cheney was a great pick and Roberts too.
all I need to know:
Reid recommended her name to Bush.
nuff said
now where's that "axe-in-the-head" smiley when you need it?
It's not guesswork. Bush would have asked Specter and McCain and the two Mainers and Chaffee. He Doesn't Have To Guess. He Didn't.
It is we who guess. I provide that analysis as what happens "if". He doesn't have to. They already told him. And note that list is not comprehensive. There could be another GOP Senator or two who is up for re-election who decides saying no to a hardline conservative is a more sure path to re-election.
The problem is, and has always been, that there would be ZERO Dem support for Luttig.
Again, this was not guesswork for Bush. We can't argue with a conclusion about how Senators will vote when he didn't have to guess and we do.
"This choice is horrible.
And no, I thought Cheney was a great pick and Roberts too."
I am curious to know: how many of you good folks thought Roberts was good, but give a thumbs down here?
I was not on the Roberts bandwagon. There seemed to be better choices. His gay pro bono work still gives me the creeps. But, the fact that he was a Rehnquist pall bearer was, I think, a pretty strong statement. And I never doubted his intellect (though I still worry about his ideology). So I am not in the pro-Roberts, anti-Miers camp.
Seems to me there has been a SEISMIC shift with this pick. Even the Roberts supporters - and I think that was most here at FR - are almost unanimously against this pick.
Who all is in the pro-Roberts, anti-Miers camp?