I should know better than to read the always-conservative Weekly Standard on a regular basis, but despite what the publication does to my blood pressure, it pays to understand what the other side is thinking.
Hugh Hewitt, a conservative talk show host, has a Weekly Standard column out today on the argument that Senate Dems who oppose Bill Pryor’s judicial nomination are motivated by anti-Catholic prejudice. As much as I’m disgusted by Hewitt’s argument, I’m genuinely glad he wrote it. In just 900 words, Hewitt has captured just how painfully ridiculous the conservatives’ attacks are.
Hewitt doesn’t suggest with coy language that anti-Catholic animus contributed to Dems’ opposition to Pryor, he insists on it with bold language. He calls Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), a lifelong Catholic, and other Senate Dems “bigots.”
The crux of Hewitt’s argument is simple: Pryor is Catholic, some of Pryor’s right-wing positions on issues are consistent with Roman Catholic doctrine, Dems oppose Pryor, ergo Dems reject Pryor because he’s Catholic.
This follows child-like reasoning. To describe this line of thinking as a logical fallacy would be a dramatic understatement.
Most Senate Dems oppose Pryor’s nomination for his right-wing record, his political extremism, his lack of judicial temperament, his disdain for constitutional principles, and for his alleged involvement with a political fundraising scandal in Alabama — about which he may have lied under oath.
Hewitt would have readers believe that Pryor was rejected because he opposes abortion rights. He argued in his column, for example, that Senate Dems would force all “Catholics to renounce — or at least remain silent on — belief in the sanctity of the life of the unborn if they wish to serve in the judiciary.”
This may be wishful thinking on Hewitt’s part, or perhaps is willful intellectual dishonesty. Either way, it’s embarrassingly wrong. Dems have blocked three of Bush’s many judicial nominees. Just three. Dems have allowed 140 other nominees — some of whom are Catholic, most of whom oppose abortion rights — to be confirmed and accept their lifetime appointments to the federal bench. If Hewitt’s thesis was right, how could this be true?
In seems inconceivable to Hewitt, and indeed Senate Republicans who have levied the anti-Catholic charge, that Dems may oppose Pryor’s nomination because of his record. It has been the GOP, not the Dems, who have made an issue of Pryor’s religious beliefs. Dems, meanwhile, have discussed his opposition to church-state separation (which Catholic political figures in America have traditionally embraced), his fringe positions on gun control, his close ties to the religious right political movement (which is rooted in Protestant fundamentalism, not Catholicism), his questionable work on behalf of the tobacco industry, his radical approach to “states rights,” his hostility for the Americans with Disabilities Act, his opposition to the Voting Rights Act, and his contempt for American’s right to privacy.
What do these positions have to do with Pryor’s faith? Nothing. That’s why Hewitt doesn’t mention them and insists Dems’ opposition is based exclusively on Pryor’s position on abortion, which happens to be consistent with his church’s position on the issue.
Hypothetically, what if the Catholic Church shared Pryor’s position on all of these extraneous issues? What if the Church hated gun control, opposed the ADA, was pro-tobacco, etc.? Would the charges of Dems’ anti-Catholic bigotry make sense then? Of course not. Dems don’t care how Pryor came to be a right-winger, or why he has a right-wing political agenda, they care whether Pryor would make a good federal judge. They conclude, based on his record, that he would not. You can agree or disagree about Pryor’s qualifications, but that doesn’t justify unfounded accusations of bigotry.
Hewitt seems to realize that many of the Senate Dems who oppose Pryor are themselves Catholic, but doesn’t mind levying attacks on them anyway.
“It is both laughable and pathetic for Senators like Leahy, Tom Daschle, and Richard Durbin to protest their innocence on the charge of anti-Catholicism with the argument that they are Catholics and thus cannot be anti-Catholic,” Hewitt said. “This is a variation on the ‘some of my best friends are Jewish’ refrain, and would not for a moment be admitted as a serious response in any other civil rights debate involving any other minority.”
This is just dumb. People who use the “some of my best friends are [minority group]” are defensively (and ignorantly) trying to shield themselves from charges of bigotry by noting associations with people of that group. These people foolishly believe being “friends” with people from a minority group frees them from possibly being bigots. Hewitt, meanwhile, is accusing actual Catholics of anti-Catholic bigotry. He would have us believe these lawmakers hate people of the same religious group to which they themselves adhere.
Then Hewitt demonstrated that he hasn’t been in touch with reality in recent years, arguing, “In the past Republicans have shuddered at the prospect of engaging in hardball with their opponents across the aisle.”
Hugh, if you think the GOP has been hesitant to play “hardball” with Dems, then I really don’t want to know what your definition of “hardball” is.