Who Would Bush Nominate If He Had Another SCOTUS Pick?:
Over at ConfirmThem, Jan Crawford Greenburg is doing a very interesting Q&A (part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 coming soon) that includes the following:
To be clear, I don't know enough about Cornyn's personal relationship with the President or his Senate colleagues to know if this is even a remote possibility. But from my outsider perspective it seems to me that Cornyn could be a very savvy pick. He's an undisputed conservative; he's a former state Supreme Court Justice with 13 years of experience as a judge and experience in all three branches of government; and he is someone who I gather would be relatively hard for the Senate to reject (as a Senator himself). If the President wants a confirmable solid conservative, Cornyn would seem to be a very good pick if a vacancy occurs.
Of course, John Cornyn is a man, baby, and perhaps the President would not consider naming another man to the Court in the event of a vacancy. I don't see how the politics line up for such a judgment, but the President would of course be free to make that call. And if Supreme Conflict is a reliable guide, the President has a genuine commitment to gender diversity and would likely not want to nominate another man.
Given the current political climate, who do you think President Bush will nominate to the Court if a third SCOTUS retirement occurs during his presidency?Obviously Bush would be able to nominate whoever he wants if an opening occurred, so I take Greenburg's take to be her best guess of what would happen rather than who would necessarily be the smartest pick. Still, my own completely uninformed pet theory for who Bush might nominate if he has an opening is Senator John Cornyn.
Answer: Janice Rogers Brown or Maureen Mahoney. Now I know you’re asking how in the world I could possibly mention those two very different contenders in one breath, right? Ok, here’s why: It all depends on which justice leaves and when. President Bush will tap a solid judicial conservative (i.e., Brown) if he gets a nomination this year. He wants to change the subject, and this is about the only issue he’s got left to rally the base. (If you guys can think of another issue that will keep conservatives together with Bush, let me know.) Judge Brown would be an exciting nominee: She’s getting very high marks from colleagues on the D.C. Circuit, and her experience, compelling life story and demeanor (she’s fast on her feet and would be a terrific witness) would present those moderate southern Democrats (there are still a few of them) with a very difficult choice. . . .
The closer we get to 2008, the better are Maureen Mahoney’s odds, because she’s a conservative who could get confirmed.
To be clear, I don't know enough about Cornyn's personal relationship with the President or his Senate colleagues to know if this is even a remote possibility. But from my outsider perspective it seems to me that Cornyn could be a very savvy pick. He's an undisputed conservative; he's a former state Supreme Court Justice with 13 years of experience as a judge and experience in all three branches of government; and he is someone who I gather would be relatively hard for the Senate to reject (as a Senator himself). If the President wants a confirmable solid conservative, Cornyn would seem to be a very good pick if a vacancy occurs.
Of course, John Cornyn is a man, baby, and perhaps the President would not consider naming another man to the Court in the event of a vacancy. I don't see how the politics line up for such a judgment, but the President would of course be free to make that call. And if Supreme Conflict is a reliable guide, the President has a genuine commitment to gender diversity and would likely not want to nominate another man.
A sitting senator with advance approval from the Majority Leader (in a seat where a GOP Governor picks the replacement) looks to be a very easy win for Bush.
Nick
[OK Comments: Steve, I don't think I see this. Imagine Stevens retires and Cornyn is nominated, and all attention is focused on the Supreme Court. Would 40 Senators really refuse to let their very own colleage have a vote? And would the public go along with a filibuster that keeps the Supreme Court at merely 8 members, unable decide any close cases thanks to the even number? I guess I find that pretty unlikely.]
I suspect he is confirmable (why would Democrats want to anger Latinos by beating up one of their own?) and is not viewed as an ideologue.
John Cornyn is not only a member of the United States Senate, he is also a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee where it is even less likely that the Committee would disapprove one of their own.
Regardless of who is picked, I suspect that there won't be a filibuster of any SCOTUS nominee. Whoever is chosen, though, I doubt we will see a judicial cypher like David Souter nominated.
If Cornyn resigned, there would be a special election to replace him. I believe that it would be one of those odd free-for-all nonpartisan elections similar to the one where the Governator was elected.
I have little doubt that Greg Abbott, the current Texas Attorney General would like a chance at that position. Regardless, there's not much chance of anyone other than a Republican winning a state-wide race in Texas.
I would like to see the fight if Ms. Brown was nominated. It would be the best since Clarence Thomas.
Bush could do much better.
If he hadn't written that memo, then he would probably already be on the Supreme Court.
Raggi isn't mentioned because she hasn't written or said anything that has led anyone to think she is SCOTUS material.
Vilsack, has ConfirmThem.com reserved "Theyre-Not-Entitled-To-An-Up-Or-Down-Vote- And-Whatever-You-Do-Dont-ConfirmThem.com" just in case?Cf. Thomas, Clarence.
Cornyn's OK in the Senate, and particularly good defending W's judicial nominees. But a lifetime appointment with no accoutability?
Souter.
You think they'd put a man like that on the supreme court?
Well to be fair to confirmthem.com, two years ago they had a wide open comment policy like VC. Today they have an annoying and intrusive registration process you have to go through to post comments. When they switched over, the comment stream was reduced to a trickle almost immediately, and never recovered. Probably a lesson for bloggers everywhere.
Unless the nominee IS Leahy, heh.
Seriously though, then the challege for Bush would be to come up with a superstar pick like Roberts so that the Republicans could make stalling the nomination an issue in the 2008 election.
Confirmthem.com suffered a massive loss of commenters a few months ago after a software change that tied them into RedState.com. One now has to be registered in good standing at RedState to comment at Confirmthem.
I asked the RedState mods to kill my months-old login because I could not stomach the anti-intellectual goon tactics that threatened or killed logins if commenters did not pass an arbitrary litmus test for loyalty to The Party. The prevailing ethos was something like this: "The fact that you disagree with us on this issue is evidence that you are not competent to comment here, so you are expelled from the island for incompetence." It's their sandbox, and their echo chamber.
The mods at Confirmthem never displayed such tactics, but their site is tied into RedState's authentication.
Lifelong Idaho resident, multigenerational Mormon family , voter for Crapo.
First time I have ever been aware of Crapo's religious faith. Don't know why, just never crossed my mind.
This kind of information is the reason I keep coming back to Volokh's (grin).
Seriously though, as cool as it would be to have someone from Idaho on the SCOTUS, and as much respect as I have for Mike Crapo, he isn't someone I would have picked as a candidate. I don't know what Harry Reid was thinking. Frankly, I can say that frequently when it comes to Harry Reid.
Regarding Ramza's comment on the dearth of comments at confirmthem, as a blogger there it's a concern. But Cornellian and Just and Observer are 100% correct that the implementation of a registartion policy id the main culprit, and I continue to make subtle and non-subtle inquiries about getting rid of it (assuming a good spam filter is used instead).
Witness and JeremyR, those are valid concerns.
And, Alkali, confirmthem has already utilized Theyre-Not-Entitled-To-An-Up-Or-Down-Vote-And- Whatever-You-Do-Dont-ConfirmThem.com during the Miers nomination. :-)
First, Stevens is not going to retire during the Bush presidency. Alas, he might pass away.
Second, damn right 40 Democrats might deny their colleague a vote, if it will determine the makeup of the Supreme Court for the next generation. Please recall that Senate Republicans were not exactly courtly to Democrats for most of the preceding 12 years.
Third, sure the public would go along with the filibuster of a perceived extremist, and both JRB and Cornyn have vulnerable paper trails.
Finally, only 12 Democrats face reelection in 2008, so that leaves 39 who can filibuster without fear (or 38 if you don't count Lieberman). So only a couple more are necessary to the filibuster, with more than enough votes coming from safe seats (MA, IL, RI, NJ).
Bush is going to have two choices-- leave the seat vacant or appoint someone no farther to the right than Sandra O'Connor.
Word. She wants it, baby. She's "libertarian" right up to the point where it comes to telling the President "no."
I am also puzzled to think that I live in the same space-time continuum as anyone who thinks that the Democrats would allow Gonzales to sit on the Supreme Court. He wouldn't get out of Judiciary.
He's probably slipped an earmark into some 300 page bill on agricultural subsidies that will require taxpayers to foot the bill for his funeral, at a 300% markup, at a funeral home owned by one of his relatives.
I think our views of how Congess works and how the American public would respond are pretty divergent. Among other things, different people have different views of what makes someone an "extremist," so the label "perceived extremist" is easier to say than to apply. (Interesting question: In a public poll, who would the American public say is the most "extremist" Justice?) And what happens when the Republicans shut down the Senate until there is a vote -- are you sure that the American people embrace a filibuster? You seem pretty confident, but my instincts point in a very different direction.
Nick
A truly divisive nominee simply loses the floor vote, since there's likely to be more squishy R's than D's in the run-up to the 2008 election. I don't see Cornyn as truly divisive, however. A lightweight, maybe, but Miers got nominated, and the social cons won't veto Cornyn like they did with Miers.
Greenberg previously has also said that the three women most likely to be nominated are Brown, Owen and Sykes, with Mahoney in the wings as an option, especially in 2008. Of those four, Brown definitely will create the most excitement among social conservatives. She's who they most wanted for the O'Connor seat. Even if Brown's nomination was defeated by the democratic senate, that would create a great election issue in 2008, not only for the Presidential race but also for the individual races in the Senate.
That's why I expect Brown will get nominated even if the opening comes in 2008 (which is where I disagree with Greenberg, who thinks it then will go to Mahoney).
Cornyn is an odd case, difficult to confirm notwithstanding senatorial friendship. As a Senator, he has been very hard right, with lots of material for the left to highlight in confirmation. But as a Texas judge, he had decisions that may be to liberal for the right to swallow. And his educational pedigree may hurt, at least according to Greenburg's telling of past nominations.
You need to stop thinking procedurally ("oh, that filibuster is going to make it look like they are denying the nominee a vote") and start thinking POLITICALLY. George W. Bush is the lamest of ducks for the next 2 years. At this point, he couldn't get anything much beyond a Thanksgiving Day proclamation through Congress. No voter is going to punish a Democratic Senator for blocking anything associated with Bush at this point.
And as long as that stays the case, there's no reason why the Dems won't filibuster, unless they can get a nominee who's going to reaffirm Roe.
Justice Stevens is certainly the most likely to go in the next year or so--but for those who think he would have to die to be replaced, I would note that Justice Douglas retired during the Ford presidency--and Ford had led an impeachment drive against him.
Likewise, I am sure it rankled both Justices Brennan and Marshall to retire during the Bush41 Presidency, knowing that their successors would be more conservative than they were (remember, "everyone" thought David Souter was going to be a justice similar in outlook with Anthony Kennedy).
Finally, while most people applaud John Roberts' selection as Chief Justice, Supreme Conflict makes the argument that he was nominated for Chief mainly because he was already cruising toward confirmation to the O'Connor seat. Had Chief Justice Rehnquist died or retired before Justice O'Connor retired, there likely would be a different Chief Justice today.
Along the lines of your win-win "strategery": Say Bush nominated someone like Brown to fill a 2008 vacancy, per stickler. That would give Giuliani the opportunity to win some credibility with GOP conservatives -- if the Dems filibuster her, Giuliani could support her nomination and say that he will renominate her if Democratic filibustering keeps a Court seat open past the election.
Most people thought Bork would withdraw when he lost the vote in the Judiciary Committee. He insisted on toughing it out, and lost the floor vote, but traditionally most nominees have given it up at step one. That was my only point, and it's really not that controversial.
Your overwhelming degree of confidence that the Republicans would shut down the Senate after exactly four days of filibustering, as if you've been secretly briefed on the battle plan, is rather humorous. Since I already predicted there won't be a filibuster, there's really no point to this bravado.
I sincerely hope Eugene is kidding, or that there will be no more retirements until 2009.
6 of those Republicans have now been replaced by Democrats.
At least 4 more (Coleman, Collins, Smith, Sununu) are expected to face tough reelection battles in blue/purple states.
While I don't want to throw cold water on anyone's fantasies of a showdown at high noon, the most likely scenario is that she would simply get a floor vote and lose. Perhaps that would still be a useful outcome for the GOP, I don't really know. But I wouldn't expect any heroic measures to be employed to stop her.
The Ediths (Jones and Clement) will be attending a Federalist Society event at my school next Wednesday, and I'm looking forward to talking with Judge Clement in particular about her interview with El Presidente.
But it's pretty easy to apply, accurately, to Brown, who is unable to see a meaningful distinction between the New Deal and the Bolshevik revolution.
From what I remember, it was in the text of a speech he was giving to the Heritage Foundation, which was released to the press beforehand. I do recall that it was reported he DID cut that part out of his oral speech, but it was in what was given to the press.
(And sorry, Professor Kerr, didn't mean to confuse you for Eugene.)
Steve, it wouldn't necessarily be a stunt for a Democrat to vote against a GOP SCOTUS nominee in committee. What would be a stunt would be to additionally refuse to report the nominee to the floor. When's the last time that happened to a SCOTUS nominee?
All I'm saying is that if it were to happen, then doubtless a discharge motion would be filed on the floor. That has nothing to do with the Advice and Consent Clause. It's simply a Senate rule. Then the Democrats would have to decide whether to filibuster the discharge motion. If they decide to filibuster the discharge motion, then the GOP can filibuster everything else that comes before the Senate, and can additionally refuse unanimous consent for routine business, until such time as the filibuster of the discharge motion is ended. All of this is in the Senate rules, and it has virtually nothing to do with the Advice and Consent Clause.
However, since we're indulging hypotheticals, it's virtually unprecedented for a judicial nominee to be discharged from committee. It's far from a given that 50 votes could be rounded up for a procedural action that's never been executed in living memory.
The minority party has a lot of ways to screw up the orderly functioning of the Senate, and the presence of that implicit threat is one of the things that tends to keep matters humming along. However, you seem unduly confident that the Republicans "would" blow everything up in a wide range of scenarios. While that's an option they would have in their pocket, it remains to be seen if they would actually go that route.
That's true, but there are some other wild cards out there that could make things play out differently if Brown is nominated for the Supreme Court. The main batch of wild cards is the group of conservative democratic senators that voted against her to the COA but who might vote for her in the high profile vote for the SC. This would include several southern democrats like Landrieu and Byrd (and maybe some more) as well as some western democrats like Johnson (who voted for Alito) as well as some others of those also. And then another batch of wild cards is the group of conservative democrats that were just elected in 2006.
So, all in all, I think she has a valid shot at getting confirmed -- depending on how she comes across at her hearings and how that plays back in the home states of these conservative democratic senators.
The American public doesn't much care about filibusters, up or down votes, the Advice and Consent Clause, the Senate rules, or any other procedural arguments about judicial nominees. That's what I mean by saying that your post is too concerned about procedure. You think procedural fairness has some political impact. It doesn't. I might add, it didn't when the shoe was on the other foot and the Republicans were making up Constitutional law in support of the nuclear option.
But I also don't think that you are thinking "politically" in another sense. Let me make my position more clear. If George W. Bush pulled out of Iraq tomorrow, he might be able to get any nominee he wanted through the Senate in the fall if Stevens retired or died by the end of the current term. But since Bush is not going to do that, his Supreme Court nominations are complete toast (unless the Democrats actually believe the nominee will vote their way on the Court).
What you seem to have not factored into your analysis is the obvious political fact that George W. Bush has no political capital whatsoever. The only reason any Democrat ever has to go along with a Bush program is if there are political consequences for not doing so. This is why Democrats supported his tax cuts and military policies when he was popular.
Now, he is one of the most unpopular Presidents in modern history. You are portraying it like people will be evaluating whether it is fair to deny judicial nominees this or that Senate procedure. But that's not what is going to happen at all. Bush can't force Democratic Senators to vote for his initiatives, because none of them can possibly lose reelection because they oppose Bush. Therefore, they can vote in complete lockstep the rest of the way.
Trying to evaluate the success of ANY Bush initiative in Congress from here on out without taking into consideration the fact that Bush is one of the most unpopular presidents in American history is, for all intents and purposes, ignoring the political issues that will frame any debate, and that includes a debate over judges. Since you didn't even mention this in your analysis and instead focused on a rather minor procedural argument of no importance to the public, I had valid grounds to assume that you were not taking this into account, rather than that you had taken it into account and dismissed its importance.
I don't get this. The advice and consent clause permits the Senate to confirm a nominee or deny him or her confirmation pursuant to its rules. So the Senate's rules, including committee evaluation, cloture, and everything else, have everything to do with the advice and consent clause, because they provide the procedures through which the Senate gives its consent.
If only for the confirmation questioning:
"I'd like to ask you about a blog post you did on April 3, 2006. Some of your commenters had questions, and so do I."
Of course, most recent confirmation hearings could be boiled down to:
1. Can we get you to tell us whether you would overrule or apply Roe v. Wade? and
2. Outside of that context, do you believe a legislature can do whatever it pleases?
Callahan's upholding of a law requiring Catholic organization's health insurance plans to provide birth control would translate into widespread opposition from the religious conservative base.
I certainly agree that the Iraq war is very unpopular, and that President Bush has low political capital as a result of it. I also certainly agree that the American public neither knows or cares about the details of Senate procedure. (You seem to think I don't realize these things, and I'm not sure why -- that's the second comment in a row in which you imagine me taking a position I haven't taken.) At the same time, I think you underestimate how the combination of the President's power and GOP votes in the Senate plays out in Supreme court nominations. In any event, given your debating style there doesn't seem to be much purpose in keeping this up.
Callahan seems to be a pipe dream often put forth by democrats and by socially liberal republicans trying to get Bush to nominate a moderate in the vein of O'Connor and Kennedy. This pipe dream apparently (and fortunately) has no substance to it.
I didn't mean to suggest Brown's defeat was a done deal. But the GOP was counting on conservative Southern Democrats to get Bork through, as well, and it didn't quite work out that way. And folks like Landrieu and Byrd aren't nearly as conservative as those old-school Dems.
As for the "conservative" Dems elected in 2006, heh.
The real question, to my mind, is: if Brown is an underdog to get confirmed, does Bush even care? It's not like his W/L record goes in the history books. It would certainly make the base a lot happier for the 2008 elections if he nominated a favorite of theirs (but again, we have to ask if he cares). If Brown gets nominated and gets defeated, is it a "good" loss for the GOP?
(Of course, if Douglas Ginsburg had been confirmed back in the eighties, he'd be The Ginsburg by right of seniority, and she'd be stuck being The Other Ginsburg. There are worse fates.)
I responded to Steve: "That has nothing to do with the Advice and Consent Clause."
You then said: "I don't get this. The advice and consent clause permits the Senate to confirm a nominee or deny him or her confirmation pursuant to its rules."
I was merely trying to point out (in my reply to Steve) that the scenario I described does not involve discovering any new rights in the Advice and Consent Clause. Rather, it is straightforwardly based on the Senate Rules. Of course, you are correct that the advice and consent clause permits the Senate to confirm a nominee or deny him or her confirmation pursuant to its rules.
Moreover, if Harry Reid can muster 51 votes to blow up the Senate rules, that is permitted by the Constitution as well.
I dont think Stevens is going to retire anyhow though. He's very active from what I understand, and seems committed to keep some kind moderate balance on the court.
If we really must revisit the entire argument, I had said that the Democrats would vote "no" on an objectionable candidate in the Judiciary Committee, and you labeled that a "stunt," which I was taking issue with in a snarky way.
While I think that's all sorted now, it still seems to me that your position - that the Democrats are required to give any nominee a floor vote, even in the absence of clear majority support - is yet another leap forward from the position the GOP took during the nuclear option debate, and quite obviously another "long-standing tradition" at odds with everything that happened prior to 2000. Be that as it may, I continue to believe the Democrats will give any SCOTUS nominee a floor vote.
Ms. Greenberg puts Janice Rogers Brown as a leading candidate. Talk about pipedreams. So, I really do not take her views all that seriously. If she was fed that by the White House, it was disinformation at best. Brown got 56 votes in a GOP senate, she gets about 44 now. No need to fillibuster her. While I am not a "social liberal" by any stretch of the immagination, I can count. So can the White House. Callahan, is confirmable and preety darn conservative, isolated cases to the contrary. (Isolated cases that can be easily and correctly spun as just following the law. Is there any real doubt that under current case law, the Catholic Charities case was correctly decided?)
I assumed you placed too much importance on procedural issues because your post talked about procedural issues about blocking nominees and didn't address the President's low approval ratings, which seem to me to be far more important.
If you believe that the President can get a nominee who will overturn Roe through a Democratically-controlled Congress at a time when he is this unpopular, I think you are mistaken. But I want to make clear, I inferred the things I did from your post because you didn't address what seems to me to be the single most important factor governing Bush's ability to get a nominee through, and instead focused on things that I don't think the American people care that much about (and you now concede you aren't sure the American people care that much about either).
Given the position that you are taking in the comments (which I still disagree with but does indicate you are taking into account the President's low popularity), I think you might have worded the original post differently to make that cleara.
It's true Leahy and Feinstein have said good things about Callahan and would support her nomination to the Supreme Court. It's also true that Boxer supports her too as does Reid, who put Callahan on his list of five good names he gave to the President to nominate from back when O'Connor's seat opened up. There's no doubt at all that the democrats would confirm her. They'd be thrilled if she were nominated.
And that's exactly why Bush will not nominate her. He's not head of the democratice party. Social conservatives will not tolerate her nomination, and that's likely why Jan Crawford Greenberg has made no mention of her nomination.
The argument Bob from Ohio makes that Greenberg must have been feed disinformation that Callahan isn't under serious consideration makes absolutely no sense, especially since everything else Greenberg has written in the book is not based on disinformation. What would be the point of the White House giving Greenberg disinformation about Callahan? It's an empty, absurd statement with no basis in anything except deception.
As is the statement that opposition from social conservatives is not as important as it once was. Social conservatives makeup 40 to 45% of the Republican vote in major elections. In the 2004 election, 80% of the social conservatives voting voted Repubican, and so not only did Bush win but the Republicans got 55 senators. Then in the 2006 election, only 71% of the social conservatives voting voted Republican. That small drop is what lost control of the senate.
Without retrieving this lost support from social conservatives in the 2008 election, the Republicans have no chance of retaining the White House much less regaining the senate.
That's why Callahan will not be nominated and it's why Greenberg didn't mention her as a viable nominee.
The tendency for liberals to label very liberal justices or politicians as "moderate" never fails to amaze me. I mean, come on, if conservatives referred to Scalia as a moderate or being committed to "moderation," liberals AND conservatives would agree that is ridiculous. Stevens is no moderate; stop pretending that he is. Let me help you out a little bit, the two real moderates on the Court are Kennedy and Breyer.
It's all relative, isn't it? Stevens was appointed to replace Douglas. By comparison to Douglas, Stevens was a moderate. He was advertised as such at the time. The rightward shift of the Court since then didn't magically convert Stevens into a liberal; if you want to call him one, you have to specify the comparison.
These aren't sure things of course, but here are some democratic senators that could vote for Janice Rogers Brown to the Supreme Court, based on other votes they've made.
These four democrats voted for Alito: Ben Nelson (Neb), Tim Johnson (SD), Robert Byrd (WV), Kent Conrad (ND).
Mary Landriu (La) voted for Priscilla Owen and is up for reelection in a socially conservative state.
Ken Salazar (Colo) voted for William Pryor (I think he's changed his thinking since then, but he's still at least a remote possibility).
That's six of the old senators.
Then there's some possiblity that three of the new conservative democratic senators could vote for her. Jon Tester (Mont) ran as being a conservative democrat and made a point in the election to distance himself from Hillary Clinton. Bob Casey (Pa.) is pro life and is relatively conservative on social issues compared to the democrats he beat in the primary. Jim Webb (Va) was once a conservative Republican in Reagan's cabinet who now is very anti-war, but I'm not sure that anti-war stance translates into a vote against Brown.
So that's three more, nine total possible democratic wild cards who could vote for Brown.
It's probably enough to make it an interesting battle, and my personal opinion is she'd win it, if she gave a good performance at her hearing and won over the public.
Snark aside, a very quick down-and-dirty Westlaw check found that on 25 separate occassions, Judge Callahan has authored or joined a dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc.--including at least 3 cases subsequently reversed by the Supreme Court.
None of this suggests to me that she is a closet Democrat or that she wouldn't be a conservative Justice on the United States Supreme Court.
Callahan for the Supreme Court is merely a democrat/social liberal republican pipe dream.
Social liberal Republicans, like yourself, can continue to push the idea of Callahan all you want, of course, but it will do you no good. Bush will nominate a social conservative.
Well, fine, but obviously how they voted on Brown herself is the most relevant data point. The real issue is that if it would be a painfully difficult confirmation process, it's likely the nomination will simply go to someone else in the first place. Enough political capital goes into a Supreme Court nomination that you can't follow a "50% plus 1" strategy.
Under your definition, there very very few real conservatives out there (a term I use for myself by the way) since you seem to require absolute orthodoxy.
By the way, President Bush's positions on social issues are not 100% conservative either, by any definition.
Yes, I basically agree with you that Brown's would be a tough confirmation (one I would like to see, for all kinds of reasons, some just sheer entertainment). But I disagree with you the nomination would go to someone else first because of that. Greenberg has said in blog interviews that the President's current thinking is that a good fight would fire up the base and that's why she thinks he'll nominate Brown. I agree it would. I also think there's enough of a chance Brown could get confirmed that it really wouldn't be some kind of public sacrifice. My guess is that she would be well aware of all this (and more) going in, and it then would be up to her whether or not she wanted the President to nominate her. If she did, I expect he would. (I'm going mainly on my reading of Greenberg — book and blogs).
Re: DaveN
You simply are mistating things. I, of course, didn't say you were a liberal. I said you were a social liberal, and the reason I said that is because you yourself said you were. If you also call yourself a conservative you likely do so for your views on some combination of crime, the economy and defense. Sure, that's fine.
My overriding point — which you try to distract from with the false impication that I referred to you as an overall liberal, which I clearly did not — is that the only people pushing Callahan for the Supreme Court are democrats and Republicans who are social liberals, and because of that Bush hasn't and won't give serious consideration to nominating her to the Supreme Court. ( I base that on my readings of Greenberg's book and her blog answers — in which she never even mentions Callahan, not one time, not in any scenario, not even as some distant possiblity, not past and not future, not ever.)
No, you said I was a social liberal because some of my views on social issues mightbe considered liberal. I did not even say WHICH issues, because that is beside the point. The overwhelming majority of my stands on social issues are are conservative, a very few might be considered liberal. I will not go into which are which, but on most social issues I would not even be considered a moderate. But by your syllogysm, becasue I do not drink your Kool-Aid, bow to your exact gods, and follow your orthodoxy, I am a social liberal.
That, my friend, is frankly absurd. And I thought the Kos people had the monopoly on that kind of thinking.
Votes when the Republicans controlled the Senate, Bush was popular, and Roe did not hang in the balance, tell you nothing about how these people will vote in this situation. There's going to be huge Democratic Party discipline imposed with respect to the vote on ANY Bush nominee, and NO fear among any of these people that voting against Bush is going to harm them politically. Hence, just about any Bush nominee (other than someone who will actually uphold Roe) is going to start out with 48 votes against cloture. And there's no nuclear option anymore because the Democrats are in control. All this means no even potentially anti-Roe nominee is confirmable.
Rogers cannot get confirmed, period. There is zero chance that she can get 51 votes. President Bush will not waste his energy in "firing up the base" for her. If he could run in 2008, perhaps but he can't so it just will not happen.
Callahan is just about the most conservative person that can be confirmed. More importantly, she is a Latina. The President wants to make some history here, so that is why I think she will be nominated.
I am neither a Democrat nor a social liberal. In the best possible world, perhaps the President would nominate someone more conservative. We don't live in that world however. We live in a Democrat controlled Senate world with 5 or 6 squishy GOPers to boot.
Callahan is more conservative than Souter, Ginsberg, Stevens and Breyer and maybe even Kennedy. Isn't that good enough in the current political climate? If you say no, be prepred for disappointment.
You seem to be married to your theory though, so I'll leave you to it.