Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Harry Reid is thinking about the Supreme Court
The activists [shouldn't these people get real jobs? - ed.] that are cranking up to oppose any plausible nominee have gone absolutely bananas:
Members of several liberal activist groups called Reid's office yesterday to seek an explanation of the Democratic leader's comments and to say they would oppose the elevation of Scalia, one of the court's most conservative justices. "We would strongly oppose the nomination of Justice Scalia to chief justice," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way.
Reid hasn't made the activists on the right any happier. For some unfathomable reason, they are pushing for Justice Thomas, who Reid called an "embarrassment":
"It is striking that Senator Reid chose to blast Justice Thomas, even while complimenting Justice Scalia, who largely shares the same judicial philosophy," said Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice, which lobbies in favor of conservative judicial nominees. "A lot of people on the conservative side were pretty steamed up by the senator's remarks."
I am a rank amateur when it comes to Court-watching so I might be all wet, but I think that Reid is thinking very strategically about his leverage and the ideological contours of the next Supreme Court.
Reid is no dummy (hey, the Democratic caucus just made him Leader of their dwindling ranks). He knows that Bush is going to have to appoint a strong conservative to succeed Chief Justice Rehnquist, and obviously feels that the Court and the country would be better off if that person were respected, even if feared by the left. Justice Scalia is both extremely smart and as principled as they come (please, oh please, do not give me the duck hunting with Cheney thing). Justice Thomas is not the total loser Reid thinks he is, but he is also not Scalia's equal. And he hasn't done himself any favors by keeping his mouth shut during oral argument. We are asked to believe that Thomas's waters run deep, but for the casual observer that requires a leap of faith.
So Reid supposes Bush will definitely nominate somebody pretty conservative to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist. Better that he or she be a judge of great statute who will sustain the Court's tradition of intellectual excellence. This is not a net loss for the left, because Scalia will be replacing a conservative of comparable intellect. It is, however, scary for the left, because Scalia seems less willing to compromise than Rehnquist. (Query whether Scalia is uncompromising only because it is costless to be that way when you're an Associate Justice willing to write a lot of dissents. Rehnquist wrote libraries of dissents back in the day.)
Reid knows that the real fight will be over Scalia's successor, and he's hoarding his powder, and his chits, for that one. If the left thinks strategically rather than reflexively, it will bargain to give Scalia an easy pass for Chief Justice in return for a more moderate appointment to back-fill Scalia's seat. The question is whether the activists are as smart as Senator Reid, which I doubt.
1 Comments:
By 
fester, at
Tue Dec 07, 01:26:00 PM:
As a liberal who really does not like the Federalist Society take on the takings clause and Equal Protection, I have absolutely no dispute with your political analysis. I believe that the Democratic party and its constituent groups need to understand on a gut level that the next two years (definately) and 4 years (probably) means that we are not going to get a lot of things that we actually like, so minimizing the damage (from my perspective) is the best that can be achieved. Bush is definately getting the Rehnquist seat on the court to replace, a decent chance of O'Conner and then a liberal justice stepping down/dying in the next four years. If the court has the same ideological composition as it does now, even if the faces change, in 2008 that would be a massive victory in the current environment for liberals, and getting two Sandra Day O'Connors and a Scalia as the new Justices would be a wash which again is a net better than expected.
