Last week, the Supreme Court struck down DOMA and dismissed California’s Proposition 8, and also disemboweled nearly 50 years of Voting Rights Act protections for minorities. The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne gloomily saw this latter development as a symbol of conservatives’ inexorable progress in scoring long-game victories in cases such as the court’s Citizens United decision, which wiped out 100 years of campaign-finance law precedent.
Recall that when conservatives did not have a clear court majority, they railed against ‘”judicial activism.” Now that they have the capacity to impose their will, many of the same conservatives defend extreme acts of judicial activism by claiming they involve legitimate interpretations of the true meaning of the Constitution. It is an inconsistency that tells us all we need to know. This is not an argument about what the Constitution says. It is a battle for power. And, despite scattered liberal triumphs, it is a battle that conservatives are winning. [Washington Post]
Conservatives are also winning their battle to squelch the RNC’s highly touted post election autopsy and the party’s supposedly aggressive rebranding effort. If Republican rebranding is not totally dead, you can now hear its death rattle.
Ideology graphic via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.