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Posted on Apr 14, 2010
Choosing a Supreme Court justice has become a deplorably dishonest process that hides ideological disputes behind petty and often personal matters. Nominees pretend to have no opinion about controversial issues such as abortion, when everyone listening knows they certainly do. Politicians pretend to worry about nothing except judicial qualifications, temperament and balance.
It is a summer exercise that often descends into ugly insinuations and cheap shots while evading real questions. But perhaps this time will be slightly different, as the president nominates—and the Senate considers—a replacement for retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. For once, the nation may confront fundamental differences with a degree of candor.
Influential pundits on the right are advising the Senate Republican leadership to mount a sustained opposition to virtually any nominee chosen by President Barack Obama. The time has come, they argue, for a partisan showdown on the most basic issues that divide the country.
“I think Republicans should want to have a serious debate on the Constitution,” says William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, Fox News commentator and Republican strategist. “I’m struck when you listen to the tea party activists. They often talk about, ‘We need to be constitutionalists, we need to be constitutional conservatives.’ ”
The aim of such a debate would not be to influence the court, since the Senate’s majority seems certain to overcome opposition to an Obama nominee—as it did when Sonia Sotomayor ascended to the highest bench last year.Continue reading here.
Joe Conason writes for The New York Observer.
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