the Centrist

Hey folks, here’s an open note to the Republicans in Washington … you won the election! You won the House, the Senate, and the Presidency … yet you allow the Democrats to bully you at every turn. The latest case is that of the Supreme Court Nomnee John Roberts. Are you people unwilling to accept the mantle of leadership or simply inept? Leading involves uniting for the greater good and making tough and unpopular decisions … something you seem unable to grasp.
Rather than blame the usual suspects on the left and focus on their outrageous accusations lets take a pragmatic look at why this President choose John Roberts as his nominee for the Supreme Court. First and foremost is that Roberts appears to be a Constitutionalist … but nobody really knows … and that is his major appeal to the Senate. After all, Bush I chose Justice Souter for the same reason, and his pre-confirmation hype was similar to Roberts. Souter was yet another attempt to appease the left with an unknown, a stealth, candidate … similar to Reagan’s appointee Justice Kennedy. Neither have been Constitutionalists. Souter openly admits to referring to both the Internet and foreign constitutions to influence his decisions; Kennedy more often sides with the activists than the constitutionalists. Conservative and outspoken columnist Anne Coulter was correct when she said that one cannot predict the actions of a ‘stealth’ appointee, and Roberts qualifies as stealth.
When the left is in control of the Executive Branch they always nominate a well entrenched liberal. Yet the mere threat of obstruction from the left sends the right scampering for yet another justice with an unknown and untested agenda. It is as if both parties agree: the ‘people’s will be damned’ … when the people’s will leans to the right.
It is pertinent to remember that President Clinton had two Supreme Court Nominees. In both of his selections he went far from the main stream and selected radical pro-abortion leftists. Why not? That is his ideology and the people had spoken through the ballot box … just as they have in the last election. Although in the Clinton era the Senate was controlled by the Republicans, both of his nominees were given fair and expedient confirmations. The rational was simple and traditional … one is not measured on her/his ideology, one is measured on his/her competency. Neither of these jurists were raked over the coals as were well qualified conservatives Robert Bourke and Justice Clarence Thomas. Thus, a staff member of ultra liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy (Justice Bryer) and a former ACLU attorney (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg) were appointed to the highest court in the land. Both jurists have lived up to their leftist reputation and proven to be the activist liberals their President desired.
Is it too much to ask for the right to have the same privileges? Rather, we see the left blocking anything conservative to the Federal Bench … and the right to timid to accept the role prescribed by the Constitution. For instance a common tactic used by the left is to confuse the public by redefining terms. The definition of ‘judicial activist’ heretofore has been a person who reads into the Constitution something they would like to be there, but isn’t, and then acts to ‘make it so’. The Democrats have recently changed that definition. It has morphed from ‘against the constitution’ to ‘against settled law’. By settled law they really mean Roe v. Wade. You may note that no liberal has been against reviewing settled law in the case of marriage or incarceration of criminals to protect the public. Weren’t property rights settled law … until about three weeks ago? Yet both Clinton justices voted in favor of Kelo which took away your up to then ‘settled law’ private property rights. In recent years we have seen several aspects of ‘settled law’ challenged by the left. This has been accomplished by reading phantom clauses into the Constitution. Amongst the most flagrant are the: privacy, equal protection, public gain, and establishment clauses … none exist in the Constitution. Thus, the liberals are asking that none of these radical interpretations (their definition of ‘settled law’) be revisited. They oft claim to review these clauses would be to take away freedoms. I would argue to revisit them would be an attempt to restore freedoms. Yet the only way they can be reappraised is to appoint more constitutionalists to the court … something folks like me have been working towards for years … at the ballot box. When finally those who promised this agenda receive the majority vote, they are to gelded to take control. The fact remains when a Democrat is the President a radical liberal is appointed; when a Republican is President an unknown is appointed. Roberts may be just the ‘constitutionalist’ and the best and most qualified person for this post, but the truth is nobody knows. It seems more likely that he has been appointed because he is stealth … and stealth is the very best the Democrats could have achieved.