Very good points. And a warning to anyone who expects their favored politicians to act in accord with the public personalities they create for their campaigns. Also perhaps an argument for making the supreme court justices elected officials, though the founders of course made it as it is because they feared the whims of the masses as much as the power hunger of the statesman.
“You all?” What did my post have to do with justices? Come to think of it, none of the posts you quoted mentioned the Supreme Court.
That’s true, you never know what kind of justice you’ll get - unless they’re nominated by the modern Democrat party, in which case you know you’ll get a bona fide pro-Roe V Wade vote. But, I think you are making the mistake of a previous poster. And that mistake is to conflate the supreme court justices appointed before abortion became a national issue (i.e. before Roe V Wade) with those who were appointed after. Nominating and approving justices is a messy process with no guarentees. Just ask Robert Bork. Also ask John Sununu - who thought David Souter was the perfect “stealth” nominee, nominated because he did not have a paper trail like Bork did. He was supposed to have been a good constructionist justice. But there are no guarentees. People are not robots - Souter ended up being a liberal justice as if he came from a Democrat president. But we need to consider the history when arguing about these things: JFK nominated Byron White - an anti-Roe V Wade vote, before abortion became an issue. **Before the Democrat party became an arm of the abortion lobby. ** Harriet Myers was an unfortunate pick by Bush. But do you think she would have been replaced if there hadn’t been a Republican controlled Senate at the time? We need a Republican senate to keep the president on task: Consider that Scalia, Alito and Roberts all were nominated and approved while the Senate was in GOP hands. And I don’t think I need to ask what kind of nominee we would have gotten from Gore. If you think Harriet Myers was a disappointment…
There has to be a balance of powers. I suspect that the founding fathers were right. Rather than have elected supreme court justices, we need to elect good people to nominate and approve them. We need to consider the judicial philosophy of our Senate candidates and our presidential candidates more than we do now. The judicial issues get drowned out by the soundbites of the latest attack ad or debate line. There really is no substantive discussion of judicial philosophies in the campaign and our republic suffers as a result.
What we want is for LIBERALS to vote for a third-party candidate.
Therein lies the problem.
It’s been this way since Madison … not going to change in the near future.
Yet strangely enough, it took certain Democrat Senators to confirm the high-profile nomination of Clarence Thomas. And no doubt they did so at the risk to their political careers.
I agree. Where there is built-in balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, there doesn’t seem to be any possible way to overturn or repeal the Supreme Court’s rulings against the 10th Amendment, for example. Constitutional scholars seem to think Roe vs Wade was a clear matter for the states to decide not the federal government. But since California and New York provided the impetus, who was going to stand in their way?
Didn’t Ralph Nader announce his candidacy?
Maybe, but we need someone who will actually get votes.
When doesn’t Ralph Nader announce his candidacy? He has been perpetually running for President since the 1970s.
Why?
I thought he was adamant that he was not running this time around. I haven’t seen any announcement. It’s not on Wikipedia.
Yep. He’s even got Ron Paul beat, who has been perpetually running for President since the 1980s. According to Nader’s supporters, the only reason people don’t support him is because they are ignorant.
According to the GOP “establishment”, the only reason why people don’t vote for the annointed GOP candidate is because they are ignorant.Yep. He’s even got Ron Paul beat, who has been perpetually running for President since the 1980s. According to Nader’s supporters, the only reason people don’t support him is because they are ignorant.
Nope. It’s not ignorance…According to the GOP “establishment”, the only reason why people don’t vote for the annointed GOP candidate is because they are ignorant.
I don’t know, because when I think of a debate between Romney and Obama, the sound of crickets chirping comes to mind.
David Brooks, the self-described conservative…more social structure…more support. Same with David Frum…
That is similar to what journalists have said: