Three Times a Charm

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

For the third straight week in a row Ann Coulter has dedicated her column to the nomination of John Roberts, and continues to explain why she is extremely skeptical of this relatively unknown jurist. Some in the conservative circles are beginning to tire of her constant pessimism, but it's unavoidably true conservative presidents have a horrible track record when it comes to nominating supposedly conservative judges. Highlights from "Read My Lips: No New Liberals":

Compared to what we know about John Roberts, Souter was a dream nominee.

He filed a brief arguing that the state should not have to pay for poor women to have abortions - or, as the brief called it, 'the killing of unborn children' and the 'destruction of fetuses.' At this point the only people more opposed to abortion than Souter were still in vitro.

The fact that Souter decided - like Warren, Brennan, Blackmun, Stevens, O'Connor and Kennedy - that he would prefer to be a Philosopher King rather than a judge once he got on the court doesn't mean you never can tell with any of these guys. It means you have to find judges who wake up every morning: (1) thinking about the right answers to legal questions; and (2) chortling about how much his latest opinion will tick off the left.

We had a pretty good idea what kind of justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were going to be. Scalia had spoken at the very first symposium of the Federalist Society as a young law professor — before it became a felony to do so — and served as faculty adviser to the group. (By contrast, Roberts is running from the Federalist Society like a 9-year-old boy running from Neverland Ranch.)

Before becoming a judge, Thomas had spent 10 years on the editorial advisory board of the Lincoln Review, a black conservative publication that ran articles comparing abortion to murder. He had given a speech praising an article by Lewis Lehrman calling abortion a 'holocaust' that should be outlawed without exception. (There were even rumors, never proven, that during his law studies Thomas had actually read the Constitution.)

But the majority of conservatives are still behind John Roberts, probably because they're hopeful Bush knows something no one else does about how Roberts will handle the issue of abortion when put on the nation's highest court. Coulter lacks such confidence.

Most conservatives, like the folks at Power Line, believes there is a perfect strategy in the nomination of Roberts. "Might Coulter be providing Roberts some cover on his right flank? In her column today, Coulter seems to me to give the game away."

Or better yet, might Coulter still be bitter over the seven Republicans who kept the filibuster alive with that deal? Because with that precious filibuster still in the Democrats' quiver the minority party can prevent proven anti-Roe nominations from getting through the Senate confirmation process.