NARAL, Dems, and Roberts
I think Sheryl Gay Stolberg's analysis in today's New York Times does as good a job of anything I've read dissecting the implications of the NARAL ad (and its subsequent withdrawal) for Democratic senators and the overall prospects of the Roberts nomination. I think Stolberg's right - Democrats are in a very tough spot here, because their major interest groups want them to go to the wall and fight tooth and nail against Roberts' nomination, when by all indications Roberts is not the kind of nominee worthy of such opposition.
As I've said from the day Justice O'Connor retired, I hope that senators of all sides will stick to their own beliefs and stick to representing their constituents, not the single-issue lobby groups who are itching for a fight.
posted by JBD @ 9:47 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
It may not be as bad as all that. With the important exception of the 2008 contenders, Democrats are not in a tight spot at all. Before Roberts was nominated, four Democrats were already on record as supporting him, including the Minority Leader and Senator Feinstein. Plus, by all indications Roberts is a big fan of stare decisis so Roe is not going anywhere (and even if he was for overturning it, there are still five votes to keep abortion legal in at least the first two trimesters). NARAL knows all of this. They are using Roberts as a means to raise money and rally the troops for the next fight, especially if Bush gets to appoint Stevens’ replacement. Most Democratic Senators are not going to be worried about this. The big exceptions are the Senators running for President who are not named Clinton or Bayh. Those Senators will need the early money and support of liberal interest groups, and may worry about offending anybody. Clinton really comes out the big winner. For whatever reason, liberal interest groups always give her a pass and even if they didn’t, she would not need the help to win the nomination.
P.S. Sorry to promote myself, but I this was the topic of my post this morning.
I've been tempted to ask you about this for a while, now.
Normally you and I seem to be fairly close in opinion. I initially found your blog when TPMCafe elevated your post on the ridiculously blatant efforts of Cheney to maintain torture as an American institution, and found myself nodding at a lot of what you had to say. This makes your views on Roberts all the more mystifying.
I do not find the fact that Roberts probably disagrees with me on abortion damning. There are indeed probably strong legal arguments that the constitution does not require legalized abortion, and that if legislators want it, they ought to legislate it. That is a reasonable answer in the debate and it's Bush's right to nominate someone who might well give it.
What makes Roberts a piss-poor nominee, in my view, is his insistence that the executive branch be free to do whatever it wants. I'm sure you read about his court's decision to allow the "enemy combatant", the "detainee" system to continue as is. He concurred that we could kidnap muslims from other countries, hold them indefinitely without notifying anybody, and torture them for as long as we wanted. Not because there were any compelling laws that said so, but because he couldn't find a rule that said otherwise.
That is some pretty terriffic incompetence, wouldn't you say? What about the constitution? What about the geneva conventions? What about every single piece of legislation in this country -- and there are MANY -- that says no, we are better than this. No, we will not do these things.
I'm asking this out of honest curiosity: Why do you give Roberts a pass on this disastrous, incompetent ruling?
mike meginnis
the quixotic report
Mike - I do have some major concerns about the decision re: enemy combatants, particularly insofar as it seems to subjugate treaty-law to a disturbing degree. Unfortunately this view of treaties and of executive power is not a radical one; this past term it already had at least a five-member majority on the Court.
What we all must do is make sure that our legislative and executive branches, to which the courts generally grant significant deference on matters of "national security" (see Korematsu, etc.) act responsibly and don't put the courts in the position of allowing actions repugnant to our system to continue. That's why I've been so supportive of the McCain/Graham/Warner/Collins amendments in the Senate, and will continue to push for those and other measures to curtail limitless executive and military authority. This is an area where the legislature must act, not depend on a typically deferential court to do so in its stead.
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