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2005-09-13 Home Front: Politix
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Hearings start - Analysis on NRO - (Specter DID handle Kennedy)
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Edward Whelan
September 12, 2005, 8:07 a.m.
The Roberts Hearing
A preview of coming detractions.
Today the Senate Judiciary Committee begins its hearing on President Bush's nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court. The dramatic developments of Labor Day weekend â the death of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, President Bush's sudden new nomination of Roberts to succeed his former boss as chief justice, and the resulting reopening of the vacancy left by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's resignation â will give added attention to the Roberts confirmation hearing.
But these developments will not alter the three fundamental dynamics of the hearing: (1) While feigning openmindedness at the outset of the hearing, the committee's Democrats will harshly attack Roberts. (2) Roberts's primary strategic goal will be to secure Chairman Arlen Specter's support, not to appease Democrats. (3) And the other Republican senators on the committee will face a choice between the politically safe and lazy course of defending Roberts entirely on neutral grounds and the jurisprudentially sound course of advancing the arguments for judicial restraint.
{SNIP}
2. Chairman Specter. As a stellar Supreme Court advocate, John Roberts knew how to find the five votes he needed for victory. He will recognize that his surest path to Senate confirmation is not to try to appease Democrats but to hold his Republican majority. And the key to that, like it or not, is winning the support of Specter, the liberal Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the committee, without losing the support of conservative Republicans. That shouldn't be a particularly difficult balancing act because Specter, in order to hold on to his chairmanship, wants to support Roberts, and Roberts will have plenty of leeway to provide Specter the broad expressions of respect for Congress's constitutional role that Specter is seeking. So expect Roberts to be particularly respectful of Specter's concerns. And expect Specter to announce his support for Roberts at the end of the hearing.
How tolerant Specter will be of the Democrats' antics is another question. Will he keep Democrats from badgering Roberts? When Schumer makes clear that he is ready to exceed the unlimited time for questions that he seems to think that Specter has promised him, will Specter be ready to shut him down?
Specter just now kept telling Sen. Bagogas (DROWNED GIRL-MA) Kennedy (DEM-MA)
to shut up and let Roberts answer at least seven times! Arlen may sometines stray, but so far he has done well.
{SNIP}
Seeking the easiest path to reelection, committee Republicans may be tempted merely to paint Roberts as a genial moderate and emphasize his impeccable credentials. But if they do not respond to the Democrats' attacks on Roberts â and to the "balance" argument â by defending principles of judicial restraint, they will make the president's next nomination more difficult and undermine the very reason that so many voters elected them in the first place.
The Roberts confirmation hearing is a prelude to the upcoming fight over the other vacancy. If Democrats are able to smear, and vote against, Roberts without paying a political price for it, they will be emboldened in that next fight.
Bagogas nearly blew a gasket, and was breathing heavily!
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Posted by BigEd 2005-09-13 11:23||
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Posted by trailing wife 2005-09-13 13:37||
2005-09-13 13:37||
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