Prolegomena: Sunday, January 15, 2006
In an article “reported” by three people but written by only one of them, the New York Times comes to grips with the difficulties of putting a liberal on the Supreme Court when the Americans have elected a Republican President and a Republican Congress.
That conclusion amounts to a repudiation of a central part of a strategy Senate Democrats settled on years ago in a private retreat where they discussed how to fight a Bush White House effort to recast the judiciary: to argue against otherwise qualified candidates by saying they would take the courts too far to the right.
The quote New York Senator Chuckie Schumer:
“You either need a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate or moderate Republicans who will break ranks when it’s a conservative nominee,” Mr. Schumer said. “We don’t have any of those three. The only tool we have is the filibuster, which is a very difficult tool to use, and with only 45 Democrats, it’s harder than it was last term.”
Despite this realization, the paper blames Martha-Ann Alito for crying after her husband had been vilified and branded a bigoted monster:
Had she not cried, we would have won that day,” said one Senate strategist involved in the hearings, who did not want to be quoted by name discussing the Democrats’ problems. “It got front-page attention. It was on every local news show.”
They seem to assert that htis was manufactured as a GOP media stunt meant to counter Ted Kennedy’s thoughtful questions concerning Judge Alito’s “membership in an alumni club that resisted affirmative action efforts.”
Since the purpose of the hearings, according to the Times and Democrats, is to block qualified nominees with whom they disagree ideologically, one wonders if the paper would support Joe Biden’s suggestion taht they stop holding the hearings altogether.
I’m doing the review for RedState. It should be live by 2p, and I’ll note this in here and link it in here.
