”Legal Eagle” Special Ed Weighs In On The New “Supreme” For Souter

(And I also posted here.)

I suppose as far as the WaPo is concerned, it’s merely enough to note that today’s columnist, Ed Gillespie (picture above with one of his pals), “was in charge of the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts and played a leading role in the confirmation of associate Justice Samuel Alito” prior to allowing the former counselor to Dubya to display his own particular brand of hackery once more…

As President Obama decides on a Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice David Souter, Senate Republicans must decide whether they will abide by the standard they used in confirming Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer during Bill Clinton's first term, or the standard set by Democrats in the confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito during George W. Bush's second term. This is one instance where changing their previous position can be a principled approach.

In 1993 and '94, Republicans voted overwhelmingly to confirm Clinton's nominees on the long-held premise that presidential elections have consequences, and one of the most important of them is a president's prerogative to fill Supreme Court vacancies. If a nominee was qualified in terms of temperament, experience and intellect, senators should not vote against him or her for having a different judicial philosophy.

That’s some truly breathtaking BS by Gillespie; as noted here (something I noted in criticizing Christine Flowers on this subject here), the Senate Repugs managed to block 60 Clinton nominees from even receiving a hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Continuing…

For most of our history, this perspective was broadly shared on both sides of the aisle when it came to the unique intersection of the executive, legislative and judicial branches encompassed in the Supreme Court nomination and confirmation process. On the basis of this understanding, 41 of 44 Senate Republicans voted to confirm (Justice Ruth Bader) Ginsburg and 33 of 42 voted to confirm (Justice Stephen) Breyer.

In 2005, Senate Democrats -- notably then-Sens. Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton -- argued for a different standard, one based on how they thought the nominee might rule on important cases in the future. On these grounds, all three opposed both Roberts and Alito. Indeed, half the Senate's 44 Democrats voted against confirming Roberts, and a shocking 40 of 44 voted against Alito.

Assuming you buy Gillespie’s ridiculous argument that there is somehow a dividing line between “temperament, experience and intellect,” and “how (a) nominee might rule on important cases in the future,” it is beyond disingenuous to claim that Hangin’ Judge J.R. didn’t sell himself as advertised during his confirmation hearing.

As noted here (quoting an article in this week’s New Yorker by Jeffrey Toobin)…

Roberts’s hard-edged performance at oral argument offers more than just a rhetorical contrast to the rendering of himself that he presented at his confirmation hearing. “Judges are like umpires,” Roberts said at the time. “Umpires don’t make the rules. They apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.” His jurisprudence as Chief Justice, Roberts said, would be characterized by “modesty and humility.” After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

And as we know, Gillespie, being a loyal Bushie, isn’t above lying when he feels he must; as noted here, he repeated the false claim that Roberts didn’t refer to Roe as “settled law” in his confirmation hearing.

And if the vote against Alito was “shocking,” as Gillespie put it, it was because, as Linda Hahn of Planned Parenthood of Bucks County wrote here (before Alito was confirmed)…

Alito is frankly so far outside the mainstream that his confirmation could radically transform the Supreme Court and create a direct threat to the health and safety of American women. Sandra Day O’Connor is a moderate without an agenda like Alito, and has often cast the all-important swing vote in cases of reproductive freedom. Alito shows open antagonism to women and to the rights and protections that we need.

And this doesn’t even take into account Alito’s convenient moment of forgetfulness during the whole “Concerned Alumni of Princeton” flap (fortunately, though, he has not yet had an opportunity to make manifest his hostility towards reproductive freedom through authoring a high-court ruling, and God willing, he never will).

So the next time you hear about how doctrinaire Roberts and Alito really are (as opposed to their smoke-and-mirrors acts at their confirmations), remember that we can thank Ed Gillespie, among others, for their presence on the high court.

And let’s not forget that Gillespie is a “message” guy, with this site under construction for his latest business telling us that “In 25 years in politics, government and business, Ed Gillespie has emerged as one of the premier communications strategists in America. He knows what it takes to effectively convey information and image in today’s cluttered and constantly churning media environment.”

Well, here’s a message for you, Ed – in 2008, your party lost! Time to reap the whirlwind.