The John Roberts political steamroller moved into full gear today as the Senate Judiciary Committee gave a thumbs up to send his name to the Senate with a recommendation that he be approved as Supreme Court Chief Justice:
The committee vote was 13 in favor of confirmation and five opposed. All the opponents were Democrats, including Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), Joseph Biden (Del.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) , Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and Dick Durbin (Ill.)
Democrats who voted in the affirmative were Sens. Patrick Leahy (Vt.) , Herb Kohl (Wis.) and Russ Feingold (Wis.)
This means it’ll be harder for GOPers to argue that “the Democrats” all opposed him — but that won’t stop the effort in print, on the Internet and (most definitely) on cable and radio talk shows. But the REALITY is that Democrats have faced a dilemma on Roberts and there does seem to be a split in the party over him. How much of that split is due to him per se and due to tactical reasons (drawing a line in the sand for the next White House Supreme Court nomination) won’t be easy to measure just yet. The Post notes that debate on Roberts begins Monday:
Nothing that happened today changed the overwhelming view that he will be confirmed in the Senate and available for swearing in before Oct. 3. The only remaining question is the margin of victory for Bush’s first Supreme Court nominee.
With little doubt about the outcome, the Roberts nomination has become more of a preliminary round to what may be a greater controversy over the president’s so-far-unannounced choice to replace (Sandra) O’Connor.
The assumption of Democrats and Republicans alike is that Roberts’s votes on the court will be comparable to Rehnquist’s, the conservative for whom Roberts clerked as a young man, and will therefore not immediately alter the disposition of cases.
O’Connor’s replacement, on the other hand, will be taking over from a centrist “swing” vote on the court and could significantly change its direction in close cases. Historically, assumptions about how appointees will vote have been wrong as often as they have been right.
Indeed, this is just the first judicial shoe dropping.
Democrats have already served warning that the next judicial nomination GWB sends up will face tougher scrutiny and– unless it’s another Roberts’ style nomination that at least doesn’t spark all out polarizing political war — stiffer Democratic opposition. A Post article on that reports:”Whatever the nominee’s sex or ethnicity, a Republican in close contact with the White House said the choice would be as conservative as Roberts.” (DUH!)
So does this mean the Democrats are hinting at use of the filibuster — which would throw into gear GOP efforts to ban filibusters on judicial nomination (what Republicans earlier this year called “the nuclear option” in their unnamed source stories with newspaper reporters)?
Hinting? NBC’s Tim Curry:
President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court to replace Sandra Day O’Connor appeared to be skating on thin ice Wednesday, even though the president hasn’t yet revealed who the nominee is.
In the war of nerves leading up to Bush’s announcement of his next high court nominee, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and other Democrats were signaling Wednesday that the filibuster — extended debate in order to kill a nomination — is an option they might use.
Referring to chief justice nominee John Roberts, who looks certain to win Judiciary Committee approval on Thursday and confirmation by the full Senate next week, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. said, “I don’t think anybody would call him an extremist, or a divisive or confrontational nominee. But if the next nominee is, I think there’d be a real possibility of a filibuster.�
Lieberman said Roberts was “a mainstream nominee. But because of the focus on the balance on the court and Justice O’Connor being a mainstream conservative, if the next nominee is not a mainstream conservative, then a filibuster is definitely possible.�
Lieberman was one of 14 Democratic and Republican senators who signed a May 23 accord in which they pledged to not support a filibuster of a judicial nominee unless there were “extraordinary circumstances� which made it impossible to approve the nominee.
Lieberman said Wednesday that under the terms of that accord, “we reserved the right for each of us to make the determination individually to decide that a nominee was outside of the mainstream, the circumstances were extraordinary, and therefore we would attempt to require 60 votes for confirmation.�
Do we hear something sound like it could start to unravel?
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.