If we can't give the President the benefit of the doubt long enough to hear what she has to say at the hearings, how can we expect the rest of the country to give him the benfit of the doubt about anything.
"If we can't give the President the benefit of the doubt long enough to hear what she has to say at the hearings, how can we expect the rest of the country to give him the benfit of the doubt about anything."
The rest of the country already DOESN'T give the President the benefit of the doubt on much. This is not an enormously popular President, sailing high in the polls, etc.
The people who DID give him the benefit of the doubt, the social conservatives...us...have just gotten the back of the hand (again and again) from the President and his team, because he made a damn-fool pick and we told him so.
Rather than pulling back when he saw what was happening - as he DID rapidly in the Schiavo case - he's going to go to the mat, WITH US, because we are the only people who were left in his cheering section.
So, now we're the ones getting beaten up and threatened.
But that doesn't work. As politicians, they can't do DIDDLY SQUAT to us individually. They've got no REAL power. But we can take their jobs away, not just by actively working against them, but also through simple INDIFFERENCE. A priest who screams at his congregation too much ends up having an empty church, and eventually the diocese closes it down. A politician who goes after his own base ends up without a base, and the other politicians who follow him end up going off the cliff like lemmings, because they lose the base too...and end up in civilian life with the political opposition wearing the crown.
The Republicans got REAL GOOD at turning on the attack machine. And it worked, against Democrats, and against RINOs. But the only REASON it worked, the REASON Bush's "stand tough" attitude was successful, was because it pleased THE BASE. WE were the "peanut gallery" that was cheering him and and giving him power. You come after US with that rubber truncheon that's worked so well on Dems and RINOs, and you end up with no peanut gallery...and not voters...and no power. And then you go home a broken, loser politician.
And you deserve it.
President Pyrrhus needs to BACK DOWN this time.
He did it on Schiavo.
He can do it again.
And he's got to.
We've already heard what she wrote when she headed the Texas Bar. Sad but true-- she's not simply not qualified.
Is "wait till we hear what she has to say at the hearings" a way of saying "maybe something will turn up" that doesn't sound quite that helpless ? Like when a woman says "I have x years invested in this relationship" she is saying "Maybe he'll change" in a way that doesn't sound quite that helpless.
If you can come up with no credible explanation for why she deserves to be on the Supreme Court at this point, why was she chosen ? Does a boss interview everyone who sends him a resume ?
Good point.