The great Republican website RedState.org has a post saying a “Deep Throat” has indicated Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is out of consideration as a Supreme Court justice due to backlash from the party’s base.
My “Deep-Throat” source appeared this evening. Here’s what I’m hearing…..
The rumblings from the base were too great. I am also told that, for the same reason, McConnell is now out. He would have been a perfect fit, but several of the movers and shakers have gotten cold feet about him. Source still says to pay very close attention over the next ten days.
This is further evidence that if you want to predict policy, you have to look at what the party’s base wants.
IT also raises an interesting issue about whether leadership responding to a party’s base or bringing along a party’s base. It’s the same issue the administration uses, actually, when its spokesman say it doesn’t rely on polls but leads in terms of domestic and foreign policy, in terms of what it believes is right: do you set a policy you think is right and do it, then bring the country’s citizens along — or to do you try to accomodate their wishes?
If this RedState item is true, then responding to the party’s base is perceived as leadership — yet responding to sentiment expressed in poll trends by voters is not. Apparently it’s good to hold your finger up to the wind in one case but in the other it is not. Quite a fascinating issue.
But the bottom line is that according to RedState.org’s item, it’s unlikely Gonzales will be an option, this time around. Whoever is picked for the opening or openings is likely to be some someone be highly acceptable to social conserservatives — means a brusing Senate battle is on tap.
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.