We're all savvy enough to understand that a Republican president is going to nominate Republicans to high office, including the Supreme Court. "Cronyism!" cried the maddened thousands, and the echo answered "Cronyism!" Wake up and smell the coffee, folks. When you are at the level of POTUS/SCOTUS, they're all cronies!
If President Hilary Clinton nominates fellow NY Dem Mario Cuomo to the Supreme Court, will it be an excellent choice of an intellectual giant with the perfect judicial temperament, or will he be an inexperienced crony? JFK appointed his kid brother to be Attorney General of the United States, fer chrissakes.
So let's not kid ourselves that Chimpy was going to reach deep into the criminal defense bar and nominate an unknown lefty public defender such as myself. He picked someone he knew and trusted. So far, no surprise. He picked someone with a background in high-dollar corporate law. Still no surprise. He picked someone from among his close personal circle of trusted associates.
OK, that's a surprise, and I'll tell you why.....
As recently as 3 months ago, the Chimperor could have nominated Caligula's horse and gotten away with it. Rove would have made it stick. But Katrina/Rita/Abramoff/Frist/Delay changed everything. As in a Sherlock Holmes novel, the evidence is in plain sight.
This is a Bush pick and not a Rove pick!
Ask yourself a couple of questions. When has this Administration ever been the least bit shy about doing something totally and utterly loathsome as long as it promoted the neo-con agenda? Never. When have they turned their backs on the extra-chromosome crowd on the Christian right? Never. So why this pick at this time? Why not Janice Rogers Brown, who would have made the fundies swoon with unabashed delight?
Because the other guy just blinked.
The Administration has practically come out and announced that they have neither the stomach nor the party discipline to ram their ideologically pure choice through the senate, even with a 55/45 majority. The preznit's political capital is all gone, and furthermore, ain't nobody from the Spector/McCain/Graham/Shays/Snowe/Collins/Hagel wing of the GOP taking any orders from TurdBlossom these days. And I suspect the Chimp was made aware of that cold, cruel fact. As in, "If you nominate an ideologue, you're going to have problems in the Senate, and they will come from both sides of the chamber." Hence, the nomination of a personal friend and advisor, one who has donated to Bentsen and Gore in the past. In chess terms, Chimpy's offered us a draw.
The Democratic response should be one of caution and circumspection, and I suspect it will be. I suspect that there has been talk across the aisle to this effect:
"If we can convince him to nominate someone harmless, can we get it to a vote?"
And I suspect the talk among Democrats has been along these lines: "If they deliver a real moderate, are we going to filibuster just for the sake of filibustering, or do we extend a gesture of good faith to Spector/McCain/Snowe et al.??"
I'm aware that many Kossacks were outraged that Senator Obama was not willing to storm the barricades with torches and pitchforks. But I would ask you to consider that by building bridges to those few sane Republican senators mentioned above, we may be able to encourage them to cross those bridges if/when the Republican shit hits the fan.
We're playing for high stakes, here. Just as in Watergate times, we may be facing a "Saturday Night Massacre" moment, when even the most loyal Republicans will be called upon to put country above party, as did Eliot Richardson and Bill Ruckelshaus. If the sane wing of the GOP has demonstrated their willingness to do so by persuading the Administration to nominate a moderate, it seems reasonable to consider the nomination thoroughly, but with an open mind. I don't advocate giving the nominee a pass; but consider how much worse it could have been and why (perhaps) it wasn't