Democrats Bullying Causes Mrs. Alito to Cry!
Democratic bullying on the Senate Judiciary Committee caused Mrs. Alito to burst into tears. I am sick and tired of the meanness of Senators Schumer, Kennedy and Leahey. It seems if a judicial nominee doesn't agree with them 100% on abortion, then they're criminals unworthy of civil treatment. It's a joke. The United States will not be great again until these jokers and jokers like them -- both parties -- are voted out of office.
posted by ssc | 1/12/2006 12:56:00 AM
I think she was just bored to tears. I would have been.
More seriously, in some sense we (conservatives) brought some of this on ourselves. We have pushed the notion that if a nominee is "qualified" then it is wrong for a Senator to vote against him. This is misguided for two reasons.
1) It certainly is possible that in the near future there will be a Democratic presidient and a Republican Senate. I see no principled reason why the Republicans should not vote against a Ruth Bader Ginsburg clone simply because, given our best estimate of her judicial philosophy, she won't uphold the Constitution.
2) It means that when we put up credentialed nominees, the only way to argue against them is to show that they are vile, racist, demonic, whatever. We have somehow made it politically unacceptable for the them to simply say "this guy isn't going to vote the way I want him to vote so I'm voting against him."
I don't want to apologize or excuse too much the truly contemptable behavior of the Democrats. We are not forcing them to smear Alito. The moral choice for them still would be to simply vote against him because he's too conservative for them. But we are making it more likely.
One more thing:
What the heck is Mrs. Alito doing there anyway? Why does a spouse have to sit there and listen? When did this start? Is it not politically acceptable for a spouse to say "look honey, if you want to be a Supreme Court justice, fine, I'm proud of you, but this is your gig dude." I respected Howard Dean's wife for this attitude.
When Ginsberg was confrimed Democrats had 57 seats I believe. Thus it was pretty much a done deal. Because Republicans do not have the same structure of special interest groups, they could vote for Ginsberg with any issues.
The modern Democrat party is a party built on various special interest groups such as the Pro Abortion, Government Union, Evnironmentalists, Gay-Lesbian, etc...
All these groups require subservience and therefore require "no" votes even when confirmation is assured. In contrast Republicans have less influencial special interest groups, perhaps making republicans in general seem more moderate.
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