The best line of the day today comes from Hugh Hewitt:
And if you were a vocal opponent of Harriet Miers, please explain why that battle mattered so much, but the Senate majority/margin doesn’t.
He is speaking of course about the ongoing battle within the Republican party over the upcoming elections. Some want to sit at home and give it all away because “it won’t get that bad”:
The Tapscott argument is that there’s no guarantee that there will be another vacancy on SCOTUS, and even if there is, there’s no guarantee that the president would send up a nominee as good as Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, Judge Pryor, Judge Brown, Judge Owens etc. (Those are all pretty good nominees. Why the certainty that the president will get most of the next few dozen wrong?)
[…]While it is possible both to have supported the Miers nomination (as I did) and to believe deeply in the importance of the courts and the battles to people them with great nominees, it is not possible to have denounced the Miers nomination and yet to wish for a GOP smash-up in the fall. Either the courts matter so much as to allow a politically-debilitating revolt against the president’s nominee using tactics of the sort usually confined to the left, or they don’t, in which case the Miers revolt was for some just posing for the internet cameras.
The courts do matter that much, and the consequences of losing the majority in the Senate or even the margin in the Senate that makes the Constitutional Option viable are vast and very troubling.
Do you really care about the abuse of eminent domain? The absurd decisions stripping “under God” from the Pledge or the tiny cross from the city seal of Los Angeles because of a threat from the ACLU?
How about the executive’s ability to conduct the war and keep unlawful combatants from clogging the courts with their demands for due process for terrorists?
Do you think that farmers should lose their fields to endangered flies, parents their custody rights to grandparents, parochial schools their eligibility for vouchers, activists –of left and right– their right to speak to the FEC/FCC?
The list goes on and on, and the left’s judges don’t give up and go home.
Every vacancy on the circuit courts will eventually get filled, either by President Bush or his successor (President Clinton?) and each of those appointments is twenty to thirty years of decisions with immediate impact far more real than dollars spent on public works in the far north.
And the SCOTUS nine have six members over the age of 65. Justice Stevens (born 4/20/20) is 86. Justice Ginsberg (born 3/15/33) is 73. Justice Scalia (born 3/11/36) is 70. Justice Kennedy (born 7/23/36) is two months shy of 70. Justice Breyer (born 8/30/37) is 68. Justice Souter (born 9/17/39) is 66.
Just because Justice Stevens seems intent on never retiring and has been blessed with great health doesn’t mean that this is the rule for all justices. Retirements and illnesses can change this court in an instant, and if the Senate’s GOP majority has diminished or even vanished, the course of the country’s history will be dramatically altered.
This is the crux of the matter.
I have to be honest with you. I am shocked at the level of vitroil coming from some on the far right. This one issue has sent them off on a tailspin of mindnumbing ignorance that is simply hard to believe. And here I thought only the far left was capable of this kind of nuttiness. Why would I call their conduct ignorant? Because their efforts to change the makeup of this party will send more leftist judges into our courts.
We painfully endured 8 years of Clinton filling the courts and the CIA with his goonies, now they want to allow even more to prove a point? This my friend is called idiocy.
They are getting worked up over a problem that has been going on for over 30 years. Carter, Bush 41, & Clinton didn’t do a damn thing about it and Reagan granted amnesty for god’s sake, but now all of a sudden this problem has to be fixed NOW or dammit, Bush has to be impeached.
I do not agree with some of Bush’s immigration policies but I will be damned if I participate in the destruction of everything he has done to protect this country and to fill the courts with people who have some common sense, all to prove a point.
Listen, Immigration is important but there is this group of people that adhere to this little thing called radical Islam that wants to destroy us! Do you people not understand this? Soxblog says it best:
FOR ME, THE ANALYSIS GOES TO basic principles. Namely, what is the biggest issue of the day?
The biggest issue of the day from history?s viewpoint will undoubtedly be civilization?s struggle with radical Islam. We are at war with Radical Islam. If you don?t believe that, let me offer a less controversial assertion ? Radical Islam is at war with us.
How grave is the threat that the Jihadis pose? Existential. In other words, if Ahmadenijad has his way, America will cease to exist in any recognizable form. Of course, Ahmadenijad is just the most prominent dangerously deranged wacko of the week. Bin Laden remains deadly; so too do hundreds of thousands of Salafist Saudis. So does a fifth column already in America.
The goal of our foes is not to be a murderous nuisance. The goal is not to get Israel to fall back to pre-1967 borders. The goal is global conquest.
What I admire about this administration is it understands the threat, and it wants to fight it. If John Kerry were president, you just know he?d be looking for a way to jawbone the issue out to 2013 while applying global tests that would give him permission not to fight. If Al Gore were president, we?d still be looking for the root causes of 9/11 and consulting Bill Maher on where the ?Why They Hate Us? pavilion should be located at Ground Zero.
But here?s what I suspect about Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney ? the three of them are trying to figure out a way to strike Iran right now in a manner that will destroy the enemy and be tolerated by the American body politic. After all, we?re going to have to deal with this menace eventually. Better to do it now before the mullahs have nuclear weapons at their disposal. If I didn?t believe that Bush and company were willing and ready to fight, I would be indifferent to November?s results as well.
In some ways, I sympathize with Tapscott?s formulation. It would be tough to shed any tears if Lincoln Chafee were sent packing. Hell, I?ll go all in ? it would be tough to weep if the Republican Party got as a reward for its incompetent twelve year stewardship of the House the demotion to minority party that it has so completely earned.
But unfortunately, we don?t have time for party purification at the moment. History?s moving too fast. We can?t take two years off for John Conyers to mount impeachment proceedings while the liberal blogosphere does multiple victory laps.
Just think of all the important committees Ted Kennedy would be chairman of. And consider two more terrifying words ? Speaker Pelosi. Does that sound like a solid wartime government to you?
Our enemies will not be taking the next two years off ? of that you can be sure. Friends, we live in consequential times. To paraphrase a great man, you go to war with the Party you have, not the Party you wish you had.
Please get a grip people.
They are getting worked up over a problem that has been going on for over 30 years. Carter, Bush 41, & Clinton didn’t do a damn thing about it and Reagan granted amnesty for god’s sake, but now all of a sudden this problem has to be fixed NOW or dammit, Bush has to be impeached.
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