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Three Words: Supreme Court Appointments
By Kay R. Daly
October 4, 2004

Perhaps the worst kept secret in Washington is the knowledge that the next presidential Administration could choose from one to four of the next Supreme Court appointments. With legal experts largely in agreement that the Court is currently split 5-4, the well-funded leftist forces across the nation are in near panic mode at the thought of a Bush victory.

The left may have its internal squabbles on a host of issues, but on judicial nominations, they are of a single mind - stop President Bush's nominees at all costs. Led by a contingent of determined United States Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee like Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Charles Schumer, Dick Durbin and their leader, Tom Daschle, Democrats have made obstruction an art form, deploying the filibuster against a handful of nominees. This has turned the judicial nominations process into nothing less than a form of purgatory for any who dare to answer the President's call to public service in the nation's federal judiciary.

Because the left has found itself in recent years in the minority in both houses of Congress, many statehouses and outside the iron gates of the White House, they have focused with laser beam intensity on the court house. Their two greatest assets, money and manpower, have been deployed with a vengeance to defend their patterns of obstruction, but not without a tremendous cost to the nominations process itself.

Any issue that confronts the American people starts or ends in the courts. One need look no further than recent court battles on the Pledge of Allegiance, homosexual marriage and partial birth abortion to understand the awesome coercive power of the federal courts. But issues of taxation, property rights, school choice vouchers, campaign finance and yes, even national security are all in the crosshairs of cases filed in federal courts across the nation.

Knowing that one black-robed judicial activist can implement the leftist agenda with the stroke of a pen has spurred left-wing organizations and their cohorts in the Senate Democratic caucus to obstruct any nominee who will not emanate with them in the penumbras. Ten judicial nominees are currently victims of the filibuster - nominees who would be approved by a simple majority of the Senate if the Democrats would allow a fair up-or-down vote on their nominations.

The left points like petulant children at perceived past injustices in the nominations process perpetrated upon them by conservatives. They have been able to justify their obstruction not only with the "he started it" argument, but by applying an ideological litmus test that only judicial activists who agree with them could pass with flying colors.

Cleverly, they have targeted nominees who either have a possibility of winding up on a Supreme Court short list, have expressed any opinion at any point in their careers that runs contrary to their own, or embraced even a modicum of personal religious belief. Most, but not all, of these nominees targeted for destruction by their teams of researchers, legal "experts" and spinmeisters, have been Circuit Court of Appeals nominees, just one level below the Supreme Court.

It used to be the case that nominees who expressed a belief in God, displayed legal scholarship skills in the exploration of constitutional issues, or embraced the tenets of strict constructionist application of the United States Constitution could be approved by the Senate with minimal fuss. Only displays of moral turpitude or a poor judicial temperament would call the nomination into question. But since politics has invaded and corroded the process, these once noble characteristics are now a one way ticket to a filibuster.

While national security has been the almost exclusive focus of the Presidential election, make no mistake, the bubbling undercurrent that fuels the left's fire at the polls is the knowledge that these lifetime appointments to the federal bench, including the Supreme Court will impact public policy long after the names Bush and Kerry fade from the headlines.

Despite the importance of these appointments, the media has not made judicial nominations a top story. But at the first sign of a Supreme Court nomination on the horizon, all hell will break loose. A flurry of television ads will pepper the airwaves, radio ads will saturate targeted markets across the country, opinion-editorial pieces with carefully worded scare tactics will splash through any available print medium, bloggers will expound endlessly and pundits of all stripes will spew the talking points du jour on every broadcast outlet. Given the trends of this political season, no doubt a "documentary" or two will make appearances on silver screens with much fanfare.

In short, the unprecedented obstruction demonstrated by the left thus far in the process is only the warm-up act for the blitzkrieg of disinformation yet to come in any Supreme Court battle.

So the question for voters on November 2nd goes beyond the military action taken abroad to the preservation of the Constitution here at home. The answer to that critical question will have profound implications for generations to come.

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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.