Right Wing Nut House

Enough is enough.

I’ve had it up to here with threats, counter threats, promises, assurances, saber rattling, and hand wringing by Republican Senators over whether or not to use the “Constitutional Option” when it comes to exercising the legitimate power granted by the American people at the ballot box and confirm the President’s Supreme Court nominees.

The Republican party won a victory at the polls last November. They achieved that victory in no small measure by promising to apply conservative principals to the governance of this country. This is what elections are about; ideas. Our ideas won. Theirs lost.

So why is there even a discussion about whether or not the nuclear option is on the table in the Alito nomination? The Democrats have made it crystal clear that they consider elections superfluous to democracy, that the results don’t count unless the outcome is in their favor. They have continuously and consistently sought over the last year to delegitimize the victory of both President Bush and the Republican majority by charging fraud or calling their fellow citizens that voted for Bush mouth breathing, tobacco chewing, bible humping red state goobers who vote against their own interests. They have made it clear that they consider the Supreme Court an arm of the liberal establishment. It exists to enact through judicial fiat what liberals are unable to do through local, state, or national legislative action.

The reason, of course, is a small matter of elections; liberals cannot get enough of their ideological brethren elected at any level of government to turn some of their loonier ideas into the law of the land. But being liberals and believing that they know in their bones what is best for the rest of us, they have sought for thirty years to use the courts and turn this country into a nation of simpering, whining victims; a place where every class, every race, every age group, every ethnic and religious minority is granted a special status above and beyond the rights they are normally vouchsafed as American citizens. These are the natural rights of man, brilliantly annunciated and codified into law more than 200 years ago in the Constitution of the United States by men who had more than a passing familiarity with tyranny. The Founders’ experience with oppression along with their reliance on more than 2000 years of western thought regarding a citizen’s relationship with government led to a doctrine that dispersed the government’s power by creating three separate but equal branches to rule the affairs of men.

But something happened to that doctrine as America entered its third century of existence. A small, powerful elite sought to bypass politics and elections altogether by turning the courts into “super-legislatures.” Here’s McQ at Q & O Blog: commenting on a David Corn article urging Democrats to oppose Alito because he is conservative;

I can only hope that the Democrats will do precisely as Corn suggests. Because if they do, they will demonstrate for all to see that they consider the court to be a sort of super-legislature and not a judicial body.

Instead, the court’s job is interpretation and they decide cases through the power of judicial review as outlined in Marbury v. Madison.

It is not a question of “where these men and women may lead the nation”. They’re not leaders. Leaders, in this form of government are elected. Instead, they’re reviewers and interpreters. They make decisions based on their review and interpretation, but only about the Constitutionality of the law upon which the case is based.

Corn’s suggested strategy demonstrates how deeply the left has bought into the premise that it is the court’s job to enact what the left has been singularly unsuccessful in passing in the legislatures of the nation. And, of course, he would argue that his approach isn’t activist, but instead the job of the court as he sees it.

In the upside-down cuckoo land occupied by Democrats like Senator Ted Kennedy, the very fact that Judge Alito has evidenced a conservative judicial philosophy means he is a danger to the republic; an outrageous notion that should be denounced as demagoguery by every thinking American. The point being, of course Alito is a conservative. A conservative President won re election last November. A conservative Senate was seated as a result of a free and fair contest at the ballot box. Kennedy’s ideas lost; Bush’s ideas won. Ergo, unless the Senator is willing to argue that the American people are ignorant fools who wish to sow the seeds of their own destruction by electing people who will enslave them, then he should keep his mouth shut. Especially after issuing this statement in which he outlines exactly what he thinks the courts role in society should be:

Although he is clearly intelligent and experienced on the bench, that is only the beginning of our inquiry. If confirmed, Alito could very well fundamentally alter the balance of the court and push it dangerously to the right, placing at risk decades of American progress in safeguarding our fundamental rights and freedoms.

After stating that he believed in a diverse bench, President Bush took the nation a step backwards today. Apparently, he couldn’t find a woman or minority or a mainstream nominee that meets the litmus tests of the right wing, and instead put forth a nominee with a troubling record on the rights and freedoms important to America’s families.

Putting aside the “diversity” fallacy for a moment, I challenge the Senator to show me where in the Constitution it says that the Supreme Court must be “balanced.” Balanced with nominees acceptable to losers of elections? An interesting concept - if your ideas have been rejected on a pretty regular basis for two decades. I can understand why the Senator wishes “balance” on a court when that is the only way to get judges who reflect his view of what “fundamental rights and freedoms” truly are. I can guarantee you what Ted Kennedy considers “fundamental” to his constituency of racialists, greenies, one worlders, and anti-religious bigots is not the same was what you or I would. That fact alone should cause every Republican Senator worth his salt to stand up and be counted when the time comes to invoke the nuclear option in order to get an up or down vote on Judge Alito.

It will be interesting over the next few weeks to watch as liberal special interest groups try and hold Democratic Senators’ feet to the fire on filibustering this nominee. If they wish to make their Senators walk the plank by trying to block someone that anyone with more than a passing interest in current events will be able to see is well qualified to sit on the Supreme Court, let them have at it. The old political axiom “Never get in the way of your opponent when they’re in the process of destroying themselves” should be in effect for next November’s mid terms.