Nominating Catholics has not moved the supreme court to the left. Republican presidents have nominated judges of several faiths. The only ones who have held true to principle have been the Catholics.
Ford- John Paul Stevens, Protestant, turned out to be very liberal on the Court.
Reagan- First choice Sandra Day O'Connor, Protestant, was conservative in many decisions but also was very liberal in decisions on affirmative action and other issues.
Reagan- Scalia, Catholic, has been a leading inteelectual on the court and a principled conservative.
Reagan- Bork, Catholic, was a leading intellectual and principled conservative. Democrats were afraid of his ability and integrity and mounted a vicious campaign against him. He was rejected by the Senate.
Reagan- Ginsberg, Jewish, a liberal judge whose nomination was withdrawn.
Reagan- Kennedy, Catholic, a moderate judge often called the swing vote.
G.H.W. Bush- Souter, Protestant, a leftist liberal on the court as liberal as any judge during his term. Resigned from the court during his term.
G.H.W. Bush- Thomas, Catholic, a principled conservative. Has been consistently conservative in his positions.
G.W. Bush- Roberts, Catholic, an intellectual and conservative. His last minute change in his Obamacare opinion was weird but he has been generally conservative.
G.W. Bush- Harriet Meyers, Protestant, liberal to moderate. Her nomination was withdrawn.
G.W. Bush- Alito, Catholic, an intellectual and principled conservative.
Republican presidents have nominated Protestants, Catholics and a Jew. The ONLY ones who have upheld conservative principles are the Catholics. They are the ONLY ones who stood up to the enormous leftist pressure in Washington DC.
You were wrong when you said Republican presidents ONLY nominate Catholics. You were wrong when you said Catholics moved the court to the left.
Without breaking down the wall between evangelicals and Catholics in politics, so that evangelicals have unthinkingly accepted that conservative Catholics should be just as easily accepted as evangelicals, there would have been no Romney campaign. And Romney won’t be the end of it. The party leaders (even “rulers”) would mostly like to see the GOP become fiscally conservative and morally moderate and secular humanist, and Christianity be something kept to oneself.
And we aren’t talking about past SC justices, but the present. But since you seem to suggest that Catholics were turned to because Protestants were unreliable, see above. And there also hasn’t been an evangelical in decades. And, like how Roberts and Kennedy have come out with the liberals on key rulings, the people in power seek to pick those who cooperate with their agendas. Souter was no accident. The Protestant deceivers came about in a specific era when the country was doing an about-face on God and morals, and if the GOP had picked Cont’d
(Cont’d) Catholic justices to the Court and made them the turncoats, what would have been the reaction of evangelicals in the GOP to such Catholics? The GOP leadership needs a few “reliable” justices, and then it needs some potential turncoat swing justices, and the base is only at the point now after decades of Scalia and Thomas, who really paved the way, of accepting Catholic turncoats. But it wouldn’t be politically feasible for the GOP to have the reliable judges be evangelicals while the “swing” justices would be Catholic.