Will The Democrats Pander on the Roberts Nomination?
That’s the only suspenseful question left, as his passage is assured. Alexander McClure of PoliPundit predicts a 60-40 vote; if so, that will be shameful, and as he says, a clear signal that the Democrats have gone 100% partisan. Polls consistently show the American public wants Roberts confirmed by a wide margin; Democrats on the Senate Judicial Committee have said Roberts is the best candidate to come before them, ever.
Yet the Kossacks and the other extreme ideologues won’t be satisfied with anyone on the Supreme Court but the reincarnated John Lennon:
On the coming vote, Democrats are conflicted. They know they can’t beat Judge Roberts, but their interest groups are shouting at them to vote “no” anyway. They want a strong opposition vote to intimidate President Bush into believing that his next nominee will be defeated if he or she is a genuine conservative. On the other hand, some Democrats feel they’ll be in a stronger position to oppose the next nominee if they can show they voted for this one.
There’s always the radical concept of voting for Judge Roberts on the merits, which should yield a 100-0 vote. As for Mr. Bush, the lesson is that a nominee of superior ability and character can prevail even over the fever swamps of modern judicial politics.
My readers on the left might say, well, Republicans would do the same. Ummm, in a word, no: Clinton’s first pick, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was confirmed 96-3 in 1993.
If no Democrats on the Judicial Committee vote in favor of, and if the Senate vote is less than 85-15, it will be a disgraceful show by the Democratic Party.
I’ll just repeat my previous prediction: Roberts gets at least 80 votes to confirm.
I’m less sure that they’ll make it over your 85-vote shame-free threshold, but they are not going to make this anything like a party-line vote.
Did you see the Rosa Brooks piece on the Roberts nomination in the LA Times today? It’s fascinating, and gets downright bizarre at the end…
(here‘s the article.)
Absolutely bizarre. One of those essays that would make perfect sense if the last paragraph was accidentally omitted. Best explanation I can come up with — she read over the rest of the piece and suddenly worried that someone might mistake her for an evil, heartless neo-con. So she appended a reflexive genuflection to the tenets of the Leftist faith: “Meanwhile, Iraq is spiraling into civil war, John Bolton is dismantling the United Nations and the window of opportunity created by Hurricane Katrina is fast closing.” But it’s hard to disagree with her conclusion: “Liberals should stop whining about Roberts and get on with building a positive case for sweeping change at the polls.“
Mark-
Any predictions of your own on how the two votes (committee and floor) will turn out?
Clint: (quoting self)
By stringing these phrases together in such a fashion, Brooks reveals that in her world view, these three elements, Iraq, the U.N., and Hurricane Katrina, are integrally related. I read this as an admission that the left knows that under current political circumstances it can’t really do anything about Iraq or U.N. reform, unless they exploit the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to gain an advantage. Its worth reading that last, plaintive phrase again: “…the window of opportunity created by Hurricane Katrina is fast closing.” How terrible that the President has been responding effectively to speed aid to the tens of thousands displaced by the natural disaster and to begin the process of rebuilding the Gulf coast. Got to move fast before he does something else to help them. Does Professor Brooks have any idea how ghoulish that sounds? Or how desperate?
Wow, just read the article, you guys are right; what a craven ending…Clint, my prediction – six Democrats on the committee vote against, Senate vote is 73-27…
[...] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your ownsite. [...]