What I Want To Happen

Earlier today I looked at how things might go well and how they might go ill with the Harriet Miers nomination.

Now here’s what I want to happen. . . .

It depends.

IF Harriet Miers (a) is willing to overturn The Evil Decision and (b) willing to vote that there is NOT a right to homosexual marriage in the Constitution THEN I want her to be confirmed.

I’m not happy about the situation, but that’s what I want to happen.

On the other hand,

IF Harriet Miers fails to meet conditions (a) AND (b) THEN I want her not to be confirmed. That can happen two ways:

1) Things get so bad that the Senate refuses to confirm her.

2) Things get so bad that Bush withdraws her nomination.

I don’t care which.

I wish that I could be more concrete about what I want, but in the absence of knowing where Miers is with respect to (a) and (b), I can’t. I can only offer a conditional expression of my desires.

I’m hacked about being in such a situation, and–frankly–I find it ABSURD.

This "Don’t ask, don’t tell" policy on abortion that recent Republican presidents have been following with respect to Supreme Court nominees is absurd. Democrats don’t follow that when they’re in office, and as a result, they get the kinds of justices they want (Breyer, Ginsburgh).

By contrast, look at the Lame-Os and outright Evilfolk that Republican presidents have stuck us with:

  • Warren Burger (original vote FOR the Evil Decision)
  • Harry Blackmun (AUTHOR of the Evil Decision)
  • Lewis Powell (original vote FOR the Evil Decision)
  • John Paul Stevens (voted to uphold the Evil Decision)
  • Sandra Day O’Connor (voted to uphold the Evil Decision)
  • Anthony Kennedy (voted to uphold the Evil Decision)
  • David Souter (voted to uphold the Evil Decision)

Now compare this list to the GOOD (or semi-good) justices that have been nominated by Republican presidents in the same timeframe:

  • William Renhquist (original vote AGAINST the Evil Decision)
  • Antonin Scalia (voted to overturn the Evil Decision)
  • Clarence Thomas (voted to overturn the Evil Decision)

So it’s 7 to 3.

That’s a DIRT POOR batting average, fellas.

And in recent cases, it’s faciliated by the "Don’t ask, don’t tell" policy.

Overall, it’s been facilitated by Republican presidents not INSISTING that only originalists be put on the bench.

Some allowance can be made for the fact that, thirty years ago there was no Federalist Society and no organized originalist movement, but that’s still a DIRT POOR record, and there is no reason for it to continue today.

Not when there are tons of good originalists out there to pick from.

Not when Republicans have 55 seats in the Senate.

The president is playing with fire.

These nominations are WHY he won both of his elections. If pro-lifers were taken out of the equation, he would have been defeated both times. These nominations are THE THING he was sent to Washington to do, and at the moment he’s giving every appearance of fouling them up.

This is NOT inspiring to his base, and his presidency will founder if ANY of them go the wrong way. His base will simply desert him and he will be unable to accomplish anything in the remainder of his second term, with even more notably diminished capacity to do anything after the punitive 2006 elections take their toll on the Republican Party.

Unless Bush is playing the "How things could go well" scenario and has secret, insider information that BOTH Roberts AND Miers meet conditions (a) AND (b) then this stealth candidate strategy is not only DANGEROUS and UNNECESSARY, it’s also utterly PUSILLANIMOUS.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

26 thoughts on “What I Want To Happen”

  1. And that is precisely why people are so mad. We all know about the poor track record of Republican Presidents in the past with regards to SC nominations, and now we are only willing to accept nominees with public records and writings to indicate that they are very likely to overturn Roe and otherwise uphold the Constitution in its original intent.
    We didn’t work so hard to control the entire Congress, Senate and Presidency in order that we could get more stealth nominees. Bush should have known better than this, and now he (and we) are basically in a “no win” situation.

  2. By a “no win” situation, I mean that the nomination has already damaged, splintered, and divided the conservative base, as well as Bush’s approval ratings.
    If we defeat Miers’ nomination, Bush’s political position is weakened even further, the next nominee may be even worse, and we probably get O’Connor back for another term.
    If she is accepted, we don’t know how she would vote, and if she turns out NOT to be a reliable originalist/conservative vote, the Republican base would totally explode. Besides this, there is a lot of sticking power to the “cronyism” charges.
    The only way out is if Miers withdraws herself ASAP. She showed poor judgment in accepting the nomination in the first place.

  3. Supreme Court, the Republican Party and Abortion

    Jimmy Akin wrote today about the past appointments to the SCOTUS by Republican presidents. It’s very interesting, given that the Republican party has become known as “the anti-abortion party”.
    The question is … why? Considering that Roe v Wade…

  4. The pro-life movement set itself up for this moment by continuing to support the Republican candidates despite their overwhelming failure to appoint pro-life Supreme Court justices (7-3 pro-choice as Jimmy points out) and even though W. said OVER and OVER that he would not apply an pro-life litmus test to selecting Supreme Court justices. Frankly, this is exactly what I expected from W. and exactly why I resisted all the pro-life appeals to support him regardless of what I thought of his other positions.
    The pro-life movement needs to abandon the Republican party in a hurry over this nomination. The divorce is long overdue. Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ve been used for a long time. It’s time to strike out on our own. We may have to spend some time in a shelter for abused political activists for awhile, but while we’re there, we’ll have an excellent opportunity to reexamine our strategy for ending abortion and (perhaps) come up with something a little bit more effective than what we’ve been doing for the past 30 years.

  6. I don’t really care if Bush applies a pro-life litmus test, as long as he puts strict constitutionalists/originalists on the court. You don’t even have to be pro-life to agree that Roe made a mockery of the Constitution.
    In fact, I would rely more heavily on a Constitutionalist originalist to overturn Roe than someone who is “personally pro-life”. “Personally pro-life” definitely seems to fit Miers, but as far as her Constitutionalist philosophy, we have no idea whatsover.

  7. Just remember that overturning Roe is only the first step. Even with Roe overturned, abortion is not instantly banned. What will happen is that abortion will revert to a state issue.
    Since I live in a blue state (California) abortion will not change any time soon. For other states, YMMV.
    Granted, overturning Roe is important. But it is only an important first step.

  8. That Bush didn’t anticipate such a reaction is enough to demonstrate to me that I cannot just trust him. He desperately needs solid help to pick a nominee.
    By the way, his October poll ratings are utterly irrelevant. This very well may be the last SCOTUS position he gets to fill.

  11. Bush is probably baffled by the outcry. After all, Roberts’ Catholicism, work in the Reagan/Bush administrations and marriage to a lawyer who worked for Feminists for Life was enough to assuage the social conservatives, in spite of his pro bono work for the advocates of gay rights. So, he probably thought that Miers’ membership in an evangelical church, work in his administration, and occasional donations to pro-life groups would be enough this time around. In fact, those are enough reassurance for a lot of social conservatives, such as Dobson. Come to think of it, why aren’t the people who are complaining about Miers also complaining about Roberts? To me, neither one can be trusted to interpret the constitution the way that social conservatives want.

  12. Jimmy wrote
    “Not when Republicans have 55 seats in the Senate.”
    That’s not the issue. The issue is how many of these Republicans are pro-life.
    It’s been reported that in the previous couple of weeks President Bush had been “consulting” with senators about the nomination. My guess is that this included sending Arlen Specter a list of possible nominees, including pro-life worthies such as Brown and Luttig, and the list came back with “DOA” next to their names. Bush then picked the best remaining name on the list to nominate.
    We all know that abortion rights are as close to infallible dogma as anything held by the Democrat Party. The problem is that there are some Senate Republicans that feel that way, too. I can think of three or four Republican senators whom I suspect would never vote to confirm any nominee who explicitly opposed abortion (or otherwise even made a big enough deal about being an “originalist” so that one might suspect he or she would overturn Roe v. Wade). Throw in several more wobbly Republicans, and it simply may not be possible in today’s political climate to have an obvious pro-life justice confirmed.
    If this is true, then you can’t blame Bush – he’s just trying to get who he thinks is the best confirmable candidate onto the Court. You can’t even fully blame those pro-choice Republican senators (although they deserve some culpability for enabling evil to continue its work). The ultimate culprits are we, the people. Actually, I don’t mean we, the viewers of this blog; I believe that all of us here are pro-life (save the occasional troll). Rather, I mean us Americans in general; polls show that most Americans just don’t consider abortion to be a big issue, and of the ones who do consider important, a lot of them want abortion to remain legal. There’s simply little, if any, political cost to being pro-abort these days. We get the government we deserve.
    The issue of eliminating abortion in this country runs a lot deeper than the Supreme Court pick of a president. As someone said in another thread: pray, pray, pray!

  13. This “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on abortion that recent Republican presidents have been following with respect to Supreme Court nominees is absurd.
    On the other hand, at least the nominees show up to answer questions. That wasn’t the case until very recently in history and isn’t required at all. It used to be that nominees would return a polite letter declining and inviting everyone to examine their records … which didn’t have to be from legal careers (as far as I understand it … because that isn’t a requirement).

  14. Well, if the Republicans get enough seats to break a filibuster, then they can be open about asking the abortion question. As it stands, the Dems will fight to the death if the judge is openly pro-life. Bush can’t pull a Pryor-like recess appointment when it comes to the Supreme Court.

  15. can (Ike did it on at least one occasion, with Earl Warren), but it wouldn’t accomplish much since the recess appointment would last for less than two years and there would be political hell to pay. Also, it won’t work with the O’Connor seat since O’Connor specifically conditioned her resignation on the confirmation of her successor.

  16. Jonathan,
    How come Clinton was able to get Ginsberg on the court when his party didn’t even control the Senate, let along by 5 votes? I’m not holding out for an 80 seat Republican Senate before I can get the justices I was promised on the court.

  18. How come Clinton was able to get Ginsberg on the court when his party didn’t even control the Senate, let along by 5 votes?
    The Senate was under Democratic control in 1993 when Ginsburg was appointed.

  19. And in August of 1993, when she was confirmed, the Dems had a 56-44 majority. I’m not saying that Republicans didn’t give her a pass (there were only three dissenting votes), only that your facts were quite mistaken.

  20. And in August of 1993, when she was confirmed, the Dems had a 56-44 majority. I’m not saying that Republicans didn’t give her a pass (there were only three dissenting votes), only that your facts were quite mistaken.

  23. Interestingly, Ginsburg’s lack of opposition shows that the Republicans were playing by the old, pre-bork rules (the same rules that got Nino Scalia through with zero opposition). Since the judicial filibuster had yet to rear its ugly head*, they couldn’t have stopped her anyway.
    *Except in the case of Abe Fortas, which was a rather unique case for a number of reasons.

  24. If even a single justice put on the Supreme Court by W fails to vote to overturn Roe, then I will abandon the Republican party. In my opinion, the republican party doesn’t have alot going for it, especially as of late, but the one thing that has kept me voting republican for the past 20 years is the fact that they generally run on a pro-life plank. But 20 years has borne little to no fruit. I am weary of the political games.
    I voted for George Bush for one PRIMARY reason; to put strict constructionists on the court. He promised to do so. There is absolutely no excuse for any failure to deliver on that promise. If he does fail in this respect, even once, then I see no reason to continue to support the so-called pro-life republicans. I will go third party. If Hillary gets elected, so be it. Not much difference anyway.

  25. The new pro-life party to split from the Republican and Democratic parties (if the split happens) should be called:
    THE ORIGINALIST PARTY
    I think this would be a great name for the new non-secular party. It is patriotic in that it idealizes the framers of the Constitution. And because they were men of faith, it also carries great appeal to broad faith-based support. Such a political base would be very loyal, even “faithful.” The name also implies, of course, a greater respect for the constitution, limiting powers of the SC and government in general, and a goal of repealing all laws which illegally changed the constitution.
    But splitting is a very dangerous thing to do and would weaken us to the point of irrelevance. After all, there are still other issues like embryonic stem cell research that we can fight. My idea is that it should only be done if Nader or some other loose cannon continues to interfere in the Liberal Democratic power base.
    This is quite possible. So maybe we should get everything ready now for an immediate abandon ship. And maybe we should not be at all quiet about it…

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