Posted on 07/12/2005 1:21:11 PM PDT by CHARLITE
With Sandra Day O’Connor’s recent resignation from the U.S. Supreme Court and the expected resignation of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, there is no shortage of talk about who should replace them. Senate liberals demand that the President “unite America” by nominating a moderate, consensus candidate. They further demand that the President consult with them and allow them to pre-approve the nominee.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) argues that these nominations are “an opportunity for President Bush to bring the country together.” By this, Schumer means that the President should appoint the sort of judge that John Kerry would have appointed had he won. The fact is, it doesn’t much matter who the President appoints; Senate Democrats will label them unacceptable and extreme. Yet, it is the liberals who make the extreme and unreasonable demands. All conservatives request is that the President keeps his campaign promise to appoint judges who will faithfully interpret the Constitution and not abuse their lifetime appointment to impose their political will on America.
Schumer also demands that the President work with Senate Democrats to find acceptable nominees and cites Bill Clinton’s conversations with Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as the precedent. There is one problem with this example – President Clinton worked with Senate Republicans because they were the majority party in the Senate. Someone needs to remind Senator Schumer that Senate Democrats are in the minority – one that has been shrinking over the past decade precisely because of the extremism of folks like Schumer, Ted Kennedy and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Bill Clinton never won a majority of America’s votes, yet he won the election and as a result won the right to appoint two justices to the Supreme Court. He had to work with the majority party in the Senate, just as President Bush must now work with the majority party in the Senate. Even with a Republican Senate majority, Clinton was able to appoint two of the most liberal justices now sitting on the Court. Clinton did not appoint moderate, consensus candidates. He did not use his choices to “unite” America. Nor did Republicans demand that he do so.
Elections have consequences – one of which is that the winners wield the power and the losers do not. That is called representative democracy. Because President Bush won the election, he gets to name the judicial nominees. The Senate gets to approve or disapprove. As a result of the last three elections, Republicans are the majority party in the Senate. Senate Democrats wish it were otherwise, but it is not. They have the right to vote no if they like, but they do not have enough votes by themselves to stop the confirmation of the President’s nominees. To give them power they have not won at the ballot box, would be to permit them to steal from the majority of American citizens their right of self-government – the very definition of tyranny.
The “judicial nomination” talk currently emanating from many Senate Democrats is calculated to overturn the results of numerous elections over the last six years. It seems they support democracy only when they win. When they don’t win, they support whatever gives them the benefits of winning – even if it means stealing the right of self-government from the majority of American citizens. They are shameless political opportunists seeking to aggrandize their own political power – nothing more.
The President must ignore their temper tantrums and appoint Supreme Court justices who will faithfully interpret the Constitution. No more judges who disregard the Constitution or rely upon opinion polls and foreign law. Fidelity to the Constitution must be the standard. Nor should the President take a chance on those who are basically conservative, but are politically pragmatic in their jurisprudence and lack a proven track record of constitutional fidelity. We’ve had years of justices who play politics. We need a court that will faithfully interpret the Constitution and leave the politics to the elected officials. That is what the President promised, what America wants, and what the President must deliver – even if Senate Democrats and extreme special interest groups vitriolically oppose him.
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Mr. Landrith is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was Business Editor of the Virginia Journal of Law and Politics. He had a successful law practice in business and litigation. In 1994 and 1996, Mr. Landrith was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's Fifth Congressional District. He served on the Albemarle County School Board. Mr. Landrith is an adjunct professor at the George Mason School of Law. He is recognized as an authority on constitutional law and jurisprudence, federalism, global warming, and property rights.
Contact: george@ff.org
Bush should nominate Janice Rogers Brown. She'll follow the constitution, and the Dems have already admitted she is not "extreme". It would be ROFL time watching the unbridled hypocrisy as the Dems try to bash a black woman who's father was a sharecropper, and who received 76% of the vote in Kalifornia.
:-)
No, Senator, the President of the United States should not use his constitutional duty of appointing guardians of our Constitution to "bring the country together." That would be a misuse of the role the Founders envisioned for the President. You, Leahy, Reid, and the others who are now using this "bring us together" line are, in fact, risking endangering the future liberty of your posterity for your Party's potential present political gain. I suggest you read George Washington's Farewell Address. He described precisely what you are doing and the dangers it could present for the nation.
Here is my post on another thread on this subject:
The President of the United States would do well to use his time reviewing the writings of America's Founders, its first few Presidents, and THE FEDERALIST, the series of 85 essays published in NY newspapers and written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay as expositions of the meaning and intent of the Constitution. A two-volume edition was published in 1788 for use in the ratification process in the other states.
According to Thomas Jefferson's record of an 1825 meeting of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, the Board directed use of the 85 essays as the text for its law school in studies of "the general principles of liberty and the rights of man."
Jefferson's minutes stated, "The Federalist constitute and authority to which appeal is habitually made by all, and rarely declined or denied by any as evidencee of the general opinion of those who framed, and of those who accepted the Constitution of the U. S., on questions as to its genuine meaning."
For many decades, they were used as the basis for study in schools across America as a means of enlightening the minds of citizens on their Constitution.
America's ideas of liberty are under attack from without, and worse, from within, by those who would deny the Constitution's basis in the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence--Creator-endowed life, liberty, and rights, the foundation that distinguished it from all other constitutions that had ever been written.
Whether or not the ideas survive for posterity may well rest on the momentous decisions this President is about to make.
He does not need to consult his base, nor does he need to consult and compromise with the Left. He does need to consult the words and actions of his noble predecessors, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, and others who devised a formula for liberty which is unique in the world. Like them, President George W. Bush will be judged by future generations by his willingness to sacrifice all for the cause of liberty!
Perhaps this makes sense to those whose minds are clouded with politically correct mindset, but the function of a Supreme Court nominee (or any court nominee) has NOTHING to do with bringing the country together or apart. They are to make rulings based upon the constitution...plain and simple.
I don't know why the president is even tolerating the Democrats' "consensus" game! He is THE BOSS. He (we) won the ELECTION! Our president gets to choose whomever he wants........and that's final. It annoys me seeing Harry Reid posturing outside of the White House. Reid doesn't even have the character credentials to serve in the United States Senate, let alone weigh in on President Bush's Supreme Court selections, for pete's sake!
Thanks for your comments!
Char :)
The Democrats may be "roe-ing" their boat over a waterfall on these upcoming nominations. Their hard line liberal strategies, motivated as much by fund raising interests as by practical politics, could actually accelerate the curtailing of abortion access in the United States - just as the South's unwillingness to compromise after Lincoln's election probably eventually brought about a more rapid abolition of slavery.
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