[Mb-civic] Kerry and Kennedy misfire - Scot Lehigh - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

Kerry and Kennedy misfire

By Scot Lehigh  |  September 23, 2005

HOW SHOULD Senate Democrats respond to the example Ted Kennedy and John 
Kerry set Wednesday in declaring their opposition to John Roberts in a 
one-two political punch?

By disregarding it.

Why? Well, first let's review the bidding. When Sandra Day O'Connor 
announced her retirement, Democrats warned President Bush not to 
nominate a conservative ideologue to replace her on the Supreme Court.

Bush responded by putting up a well-qualified jurist with widely 
recognized legal skills, someone the Senate unanimously confirmed to the 
US Court of Appeals in 2003. To rework Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s line 
about FDR, John Roberts has both a first-class intellect and a 
first-rate temperament.

Then, when Chief Justice William Rehnquist died, the president 
effectively lowered the ideological stakes by renominating Roberts for 
the chief justice's job, which means his confirmation would hardly 
change the court's makeup.

Roberts, as expected, played the Sphinx on many issues during his 
confirmation hearings. Still, he not only called Roe v. Wade ''settled 
as a precedent" and thus entitled to respect; he suggested that the 
subsequent decisions upholding Roe have precedential value as well. 
What's more, he said he sees an established right of privacy in the 
Constitution. That's further than some successful past nominees have gone.

Now, with all that as prologue, the party's liberal interest groups are 
urging Democrats to oppose Roberts in order to send a message to Bush 
not to make his next nominee to the court a conservative ideologue.

Ah, that political pretzel logic.

Still, on Wednesday morning, both Kennedy and Kerry took to the Senate 
floor to announce that they would be voting against Roberts, with Kerry 
appraising the coy jurist at such length that time's winged chariot 
eventually hurried near, forcing him to skip page upon page of his 
anti-Roberts reasoning. (The nation seems likely to survive.)

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/09/23/kerry_and_kennedy_misfire/
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