Thursday, August 25, 2005
One Things For Sure -- It'll Be A Zoo
There's a lot of speculation about how the Roberts nomination hearings are going to go. OpinionJournal wonders if it's going to go Thomas or Bork.
John Roberts's nomination looked at first more like the Thomas fight than the Bork one, with liberal complaints of a limited paper trail, efforts to invade his family's privacy, and a dishonest attack by feminists. But 75,000 pages of documents later, liberals have as much to attack Judge Roberts on as they did Judge Bork. Targets of opportunity are more pithy and witty, but no less a treasure trove of issues. Documents recording Mr. Roberts's policy-shaping opinions over 12 years of executive branch service have revealed his views on as far-ranging a set of history-shaping interventions as the Senate has ever before scrutinized for any Supreme Court nominee.While WaPo points to Arlen Specter hinting that he is going to use the hearings to complain about the court in general.
It turns out that behind the mild-mannered judicial Clark Kent who appeared with President Bush last July is a conservative Superman. Some supporters find his lack of scarring over the years reason for suspicion, as well as his minor roles in some liberal causes. But Robert Bork received much more serious Republican fire.
Yet even though the Bork fight shows us the direction in which the Roberts fight may go, Judge Roberts's confirmation is all but inevitable, barring some scandal--and for only one reason: Democrats do not control the Senate. That is a lesson that Democrats will trumpet in a few weeks, and that Republicans should as well. Republicans also should be careful not to think that Judge Roberts's confirmation is due to anything else but that. The Democrats will fail to block Judge Roberts not because he's a "moderate" or a "stealth nominee," but simply because they don't have the votes.
The comments mark the second time this month that Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has signaled plans to use Roberts's confirmation hearing as a forum for sharply criticizing what Specter describes as the high court's tendency to denigrate Congress's thoroughness and wisdom in passing various laws. Specter's questions could present Roberts with the difficult choice of disagreeing with the committee chairman or rebuking justices he hopes will soon be his colleagues. The committee's hearing begins Sept. 6.The more the media zeroes in on the hearings the more people are going to try and makes points about everything from old court decisions to the flavor of new Coke Zero. For those of us that support the Roberts nomination, it is going to be very important to stay focused on the central issues.
