Expect More
Liberal
Judges
Under McCain Than Clinton
John Gaver
March 7, 2008
As most educated voters know, one of the most important issues in any presidential race has to do with the kind of judges each candidate will nominate. However, during the upcoming election, we have to adjust our thinking, on this issue.
There is no doubt that all of the candidates left in the presidential race will nominate liberal judges. Even supporters of John McCain cannot deny this. After all, McCain was one of the founders of the "Gang of Fourteen," which was created for the specific purpose of blocking Bush's conservative judges. Furthermore, more than a few well respected people have reported that John McCain called Judge Alito, "too conservative." That leaves no question as to what kind of judges will be nominated by John McCain. They will be just as liberal as those who might be nominated by either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Hussein Obama.
Therefore, since Clinton, Obama and McCain will all nominate liberal judges, we have to look beyond simply, who they will nominate. We must ask another more specific question.
Which candidate will be able to get the most of his/her liberal judges CONFIRMED?
To answer this question, we need only look at the last two administrations. We watched, as Republican senators successfully fought off the worst of Clinton's judicial nominations and liberal initiatives. They didn't waver. It was like they were on a mission. Compare that to how many of them have bent over backwards to support Bush's liberal initiatives.
Does anyone really believe that congressional Republicans would have remained almost completely silent about Bush's not-to-be-sufficiently-damned Security and Prosperity Partnership or the question of the legality of Bush's wire taps, if either of those things had come from the Clinton Administration? Of course not. Republicans would have been fighting for time on news programs, to denounce them and authoring bills to block them. Would congressional Republicans have almost unanimously passed the Patriot Act, in its final form, if it had come from Bill Clinton's Whitehouse? Not a chance!
The problem is that congressmen and senators in both parties have demonstrated time and again, that they have no backbone for standing up to a president from their own party, whose initiatives violate every principle for which they stand. Oh, there are a few in both parties, who are not so easily swayed. But, it only takes a few Republicans, voting with the Democrats, to pass some liberal initiative into law and therein, lies the problem, when it comes to liberal judges.
Same Judge - Different President
A radical liberal judge, nominated by Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, would have no chance at all, of being confirmed, as long as the Republicans have anything close to a majority in the Senate. They will stand almost as one, to defeat such liberal judges. And, while there are some liberal Republican senators, like McCain, who will support those liberal judges, there are also a very small handful of conservative or moderate Democrat senators, who will offset the votes of those liberal Republican senators.
However, that exact same radical liberal judge would see his nomination sail through confirmation, if John McCain were to be the president who nominated him. That's because most of the Democrats would naturally support a liberal judge and McCain would use his influence, as the leader of the party, to intimidate enough Republican senators into voting with them.
Presidential Intimidation
A president can see to it that a given candidate, within his party, will not have a single major political figure endorse him, in the next election or show up for one of those $1000 a plate luncheons, if that candidate doesn't vote his way. Such intimidation is not really possible, for the party that is out of power, in the Whitehouse. And remember, it only takes a few intimidated Republicans, switching to the other side, to make a difference in the outcome of a confirmation.
You must also consider that Bush managed to push a lot of his liberal initiatives past congressional Republicans, without being too terribly forceful. After all, he's a nice guy. On the other hand, it is widely known that John McCain's personality is built upon a solid foundation of RAGE. His temper is renowned.
Bush was unable to get his Amnesty program passed, largely because it just wasn't in his personality to be capable of being enough of a jerk to apply enough pressure to his "friends" in Congress, to make that happen. John McCain suffers from no such gentlemanly compunction. In fact, as a Liberal Republican, he has few, if any real "friends" in the Republican Party.
Let's face facts. McCain will be relentless in intimidating Republican senators, to vote to confirm his Liberal judges. By contrast, as Democrats, both Clinton and Obama will act as lightening rods to congressional Republicans, who will fight any liberal judges that either one of them tries to push through the Senate.
The only possible conclusion is that while all three of the candidates, who remain in the presidential race, will certainly nominate some very liberal judges, only John McCain will have the power and influence to get all of his LIBERAL judges confirmed.
Conservatives need to think about this, when they go to the polls in November.