Today brought, along with halloween, the nomination of a new Supreme Court Justice. Samuel Alito seems like a qualified guy as well as intellegent. His views, and rulings appearently, are fairly conservative to a point that the hard right should be satified with his nomination. The Dems missed a chance.
Harriet Meirs didn't really have a chance to show herself. I was not opposed to her and thing she would have provided a great perspective on the court. Bottom line, she was drummed out, and not just by the left alone but by the right. The left should have embraced her with a high potential for a swing vote on the court. But they jumped in with a song of not knowing much about her or that she was Bush's friend. Wrong move. This, again along with the right, backed her down and caused her withdraw. The left should have supported her simply because the right, as a whole, didn't like her or saw her as not conservative enough. They had a fantastic position. The angles they could have played on the right...Not supporting a candidate. Not hearing what she had to say. Not giving her the respect of a judicial nominee. Not supporting the process. Griding locking the nomination and hurting the american justice system and in turn hurting the american people. Oopps. That's not even close to what they did.
Where are the now? Fighting an up hill against an more extreme right candidate with no control over the voting bodies. ouch. If they filibuster (sp?), that can be voted down as well. With Miers, the approval vote could have gotten through with votes coming from both sides. Now, they can badmouth all they want, but they lost control. But hey, they made the wrong choice. And I guess if they make the right ones, or actually listened to the american people at election time, they would be in the white house...and majority in congress...and in touch with the american people.
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4 comments:
Wow, if you could make one more blanket statement within that last paragraph, I'd be shocked.
First of all, she WAS one of Bush's buddies, just like all the previous nominees for any position of power since he's been elected. She didn't have any experience as a judge, but was someone that Dubya thought had good character. Whether or not she would be a good addition to the court, I have no clue, because like many before her, she didn't bother to answer the extremely important questions that she faced as a nominee.
I don't know anything about the new nominee, but I bet I wouldn't like him (just a hunch... or is it because you used the words "conservative" and "hard right"?) However, my biggest regret is that now that the democrats and the republicans have "filibustered" (yes, spelled correctly) out the most recent candidate, almost as a joint body, I would hate to see them break that trend and go back to the horse race "I'll do anything for my side to win" technique and we'll end up with a far right simply because the house is republican.
Heaven forbid we should stick to the technique of questioning candidates and forcing them to either answer tough questions or get the hell out of dodge. I'm not saying that the new candidate will do any better. In fact, I fear that you're (*hold on this is difficult*) right and that the far right will blindly support the nominee purely because he is "a republican, dammit."
Put the issues aside, and think about it strickly from political strategy. I think you will see my point.
Another note. I disagree with Miers decision to step out. Even if there was no chance she should have followed the process. Just my opinion.
And to Jess. He is a great candidate, and even if the Dems don't like him, his chances of making it to the court are extremely high because congress is republican.
My point is/was that I'm afraid that's the ONLY reason he'll be approved.
I was under the impression that the reason Miers was pressured out was because of a lack of credentials and an aversion to answering the questions asked of her by her approving committee. And I agree that party politics has gone a lot farther than I feel we ever had intended: it's a horse race, not presidential campaigns, won and lost on principals and platforms.
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