Wednesday
July 20, 2005
THE SHOW MUST GO ON: Barring some revelation on John
Roberts that has been missed in the previous 5
FBI background checks and the 2003 confirmation hearings,
this nomination is almost certainly a done deal.
You can get
a feel for just how smoothly things might go by watching Ted
Kennedy's appearance this morning on the Today show. Kennedy's
effort was so weak it gave off the impression of a man simply
going through the motions:
"what
these hearings are about are really the question and the challenge
to make sure that we’re going have someone who stands
on the side of working families, the middle class, of ordinary
people, when you get right down to it.
The
American people during this process want to know is he [Roberts]
going to be on the side of the major corporate interests or
is he going to be on the (side of the) consumers’ interest?
Will he be on the side of the polluters or will he be on the
side of those that believe that the Congress had the right to
pass important legislation on the environment? And will he be
on the side of workers, or is he going to be on the side of
the bosses? Those are the issues..."
This type
of Bork-light populist attack falls absolutely flat in the face
of Roberts' qualifications and his reputation for being a even-tempered,
independent-minded thinker.
As John
said last night on Hugh's show, this nomination will almost
certainly split the Democrats' caucus leaving Kennedy, Schumer,
and Durbin in the impossible position of trying to sell the notion
of Roberts as an unacceptable extremist while watching members
of their own party confirm otherwise by not joining the attack.
Still, in
the end the liberal interest groups must be satisfied with the
show, and so the show must go on.
THE
CREDIBILITY QUIZ: What's a fast way to lose credibility
as a scholar, commentator, and/or pundit? One way is to make outrageous
statements like this:
"George
W. Bush's nomination of John Roberts, Jr. is a setback for American
women, just has his policies in Iraq have produced a setback
for women's rights in the Arab world. Indeed, Bush has been
bad for women all around the globe."
Of course,
another way of losing credibility is to misstate
basic historical facts, to get caught deleting those mistakes
without mentioning them, then to serve up a lame excuse which
you also subsequently delete, and finally to launch a vicious
personal attack on the person who caught you fudging.
- T. Bevan 11:35 am Link
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