<$BlogRSDUrl$>

Drooling on the Pillow

Monday, August 01, 2005

Miranda Warning 

Manuel Miranda, in an article at Opinion Journal today, speculates that filibustering judges has hurt Democrats far more than helped them.
Back in 2002, the conventional Beltway wisdom was
that the American public simply did not take notice
of a president's judicial nominees (except, of course,
to the Supreme Court). As a result, Senate Democrats
calculated that they could stall several nominees
endlessly without having to pay a political price.

Republicans, however, saw it differently. After
Democrats used scurrilous allegations to block
federal District Judge Charles Pickering of
Mississippi from the appellate bench in March
2002, Republicans noticed something new in
their polls tracking the Democrats' "negatives":
obstruction of judges.
He sees the 2002 GOP senate victories of John Cornyn in Texas and Wayne Allard in Colorado as being, to some extent, the result of Democratic obstructionism on judicial nominations.

If only. I'd love to believe this, but my scepticism is based on the fact that opportunism and bad faith are more often rewarded than punished in the political arena.
Posted by: Sluggo / 1:13 PM
|
Weblog Commenting and Trackback by HaloScan.com Listed on BlogShares