|
|
|
Jewish World Review July 22, 2005 / 15 Tammuz, 5765 Cashing in on the fight By Dick Morris
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In the immediate after math of Bush's nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court, we witness an unusual dichotomy on the left and right.
The Democrats, clearly on the spot because they had voted unanimously to confirm him to the Circuit Court of Appeals, are waiting for the hearings and the negative research to pull up past statements or opinions on which they can oppose the nomination.
But advocacy groups on both sides of the life-vs.-choice debate are wasting no time in ginning up their email and postal lists for the coming confirmation battle.
Already the National Abortion Rights League and Moveon.org are rallying supporters to do battle, while Newsmax and other conservative groups are circulating petitions in the judge's defense.
We must treat the passion of those opposing Roberts with due skepticism. Advocacy groups have been waiting for a fight over the Supreme Court for a decade now and are determined to cash in on the opportunity it affords them to fatten their lists, add to their supporters and pad their revenues.
The past decade has seen slim pickings for the advocacy groups, as the delicate balance on the court seemed destined to last forever. But now that the fat is in the fire, they are eager to mobilize not necessarily out of conviction or principle, but because that's what they do. Advocacy groups make their money by advocacy. Without a fight, they have no future.
Like Sooners queuing up in their covered wagons to race into the vacant Oklahoma Territory to claim virgin land the minute it was open for settlement, the liberal and conservative advocacy groups have been ginning up for this battle ever since Chief Justice William Rehnquist got sick and Sandra Day O'Connor quit.
But you won't hear that from any advocacy groups. Their mission is to polarize and to make money and derive power from the hot coals they rake to life and the conflagration they kindle.
Bush seems to have found a judge with such a meager output of decisions and writings that the opposition has to hunt long and hard to find anything to hang around his neck.
Can the advocacy groups of the left, in their own interest, foment a fight where none exists? Can they induce their proxies who sit in the Senate to see in Roberts a threat to civilization, and seduce them into a battle and a filibuster?
It will be fun to watch them try.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
© 2005, Dick Morris
|
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
