Barring some bizarre development in the next few days, John Roberts Jr. will be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Defeating him was always a long shot — with 55 Republican senators, Dems would have to keep party unity while also peeling away six<\/i> GOP lawmakers — and the dull and largely predictable confirmation hearings only served to solidify Roberts’ chances.<\/p>\n
The result of the final vote may be a foregone conclusion, but the vote itself is not. How should Dems vote?<\/p>\n
There are at least two principal schools of thought here, when considering the Roberts vote from a purely partisan\/strategic perspective:<\/p>\n
* Vote against him<\/b> — Roberts is far more right wing than he’s letting on, which is why he refused to offer any substantive answers during his confirmation hearings. Letting him sail onto the court with bi-partisan support sets an awful precedent: hide relevant documents, bob and weave through your hearings, and you can still make it onto the high court. If Dems vote in large numbers against him, they’ll be sending a message to the White House — this nominee is unworthy of support, and if the next one is worse, the filibuster is still on the table.<\/p>\n
* Vote for him<\/b> — Roberts is conservative, but there were hints<\/a> of moderation during the hearings. Even some of his right-wing supporters hesitated as Roberts kinda sorta recognized a right to privacy. (It’s led some critics to acknowledge<\/a> that he doesn’t seem cast from the strict-constructionist mold of Antonin Scalia.) With this in mind, if Dems vote against him in large numbers, they’ll appear petty and reflexively partisan. If Dems vote for Roberts now, it’ll give them more credibility if and when they have to wage a serious fight over Bush’s next nominee. (“We approved Roberts because he’s qualified and within the mainstream; this second nominee, however, is not. We’ve been cooperative, but the president has gone too far this time….”)<\/p>\n If you’re advising the caucus on strategy, what’s your call?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Barring some bizarre development in the next few days, John Roberts Jr. will be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Defeating him was always a long shot — with 55 Republican senators, Dems would have to keep party unity while also peeling away six GOP lawmakers — and the dull and largely predictable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}