Text 16067, 79 rader
Skriven 2005-11-01 05:37:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Alito
=============
http://www.washtimes.com/national/pruden.htm

The left gets what it asked for
November 1, 2005 



LOS ANGELES.

    California is as far from the reality where the rest of us live as 
you can get and still keep your feet dry. Californians think Geena 
Davis, the star of the new television fantasy "Commander in Chief," 
really is the commander in chief. 
    So when the ground shifted yesterday with the nomination of Samuel 
Alito to the United States Supreme Court -- a solid 7 on the Richter 
scale -- nearly everyone here wondered why that nice, sensible President 
Davis would have done something like that. 
    But even here attention shifted from the headaches of Gov. Arnold 
Schwarzenegger to the looming Armageddon on the distant other shore. The 
Terminator's four ballot initiatives to make California more governable 
are by all accounts becalmed in a sea of indifference, anyway. 
    The early action in Washington is media skirmishing, as the players 
jostle and jiggle for position against the day when it will be time to 
lock and load. The high priests of secularism are desperate to protect 
the rite of abortion, which is to the noisily devout of the left what 
the doctrine of the Virgin Birth is to orthodox Christianity. 
    Hysteria and hyperbole are the reigning emotions of the holy high 
rollers. "Abortion will be the first item Judge Alito and I will 
discuss," says Sen. Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee, who never misses a chance to shoot at his friends. Kate 
Michelman, the past president of NARAL-Pro-Choice America, detected 
something shiny and significant at her feet, and to her chagrin, it was 
not a suction pump. "Now the gauntlet has been, I think, thrown down." 
Barbara Boxer, the senator from California who knows something about 
appeasing red-hots on her flanks, says, "This nomination is aimed at 
appeasing the most right-wing elements of the president's political 
base." Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, eager to provoke, calls the 
nomination a "needless provocation." Teddy Kennedy, the Massachusetts 
answer to the prayer of every young woman in distress, describes Samuel 
Alito as a risk to fundamental American freedoms. (Impeachment to 
follow?) 
    The curious Democratic reaction to the nomination of Harriet Miers 
is rendered transparent by the nomination of Judge Alito. The nice 
things Democratic senators said about her, which stank of mendacity to 
anyone trying to get a deep breath at the time, were calculated as 
harmless enough because the Democrats were confident the conservatives 
would force the president to withdraw a nominee no one wanted. They're 
continuing to say harmless and insincere nice things about her to 
demonstrate what reasonable, mellow fellows they were. 
    The usual echoes in the media are contributing the bass (and base) 
notes to the angry chorus. John Roberts, the CBS correspondent who once 
imagined himself big enough to fill Dan Rather's BVDs, couldn't get his 
mind out of his pants yesterday and used a vulgar sexual allusion to 
demand of the president's press spokesman whether the choice of Judge 
Alito was merely the president trying to find satisfaction with "sloppy 
seconds." Ron Fournier rose to the defense of Miss Miers in an 
Associated Press dispatch, chiding Republicans for demanding that Judge 
Alito "get a vote in the Senate -- something they denied [Miss] Miers." 
    The first volley at Samuel Alito is that he dissented when his 
colleagues of the 3rd Circuit declined to evict the nannies of Planned 
Parenthood from the bedrooms of strangers, ruling that a wife doesn't 
have to tell her husband when she aborts their child. A generation ago, 
cries that the Democratic Party had become the party of "abortion, acid 
and amnesty" sank George McGovern and set up decades of Republican 
dominance. Acid and amnesty are but dim echoes of that vanished era, but 
"abortion" is the rallying cry that unites what's left of the party of 
FDR, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy. 
    It doesn't work. The Democrats tried to cast the '04 presidential 
campaign as a referendum on "abortion rights," and now we see how risky 
such a strategy can be. John Kerry, like Al Gore before him, warned that 
if George W. Bush was elected, he would appoint conservative men and 
women to the Supreme Court. How right they were. The Democrats got a 
president, but only in Hollywood and only for an hour once a week. 
     
    Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.


--- PCBoard (R) v15.3/M 10
 * Origin:  (1:226/600)