Democrats View Battle Over Roberts as Futile, From the Washington Post Options

[jonerik]

Roberts unlikely to face big fight
Many Democrats see battle over court nominee as futile

Updated: 6:51 a.m. ET Aug. 16, 2005

Democrats have decided that unless there is an unexpected development in the weeks ahead, they will not launch a major fight to block the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts Jr., according to legislators, Senate aides and party strategists.

In a series of interviews in recent days, more than a dozen Democratic senators and aides who are intimately involved in deliberations about strategy said that they see no evidence that most Democratic senators are prepared to expend political capital in what is widely seen as a futile effort to derail the nomination.

Although they expect to subject President Bush's nominee to tough questioning at confirmation hearings next month, members of the minority party said they do not plan to marshal any concerted campaign against Roberts because they have concluded that he is likely to get at least 70 votes -- enough to overrule parliamentary tactics such as a filibuster that could block the nominee.

"No one's planning all-out warfare," said a Senate Democratic aide closely involved in caucus strategy on Roberts. For now, the aide said, Democratic strategy is to make it clear Roberts was subject to fair scrutiny while avoiding a pointless conflagration that could backfire on the party. "We're going to come out of this looking dignified and will show we took the constitutional process seriously," the aide said.

"This was a smart political choice from the White House," said one prominent Democratic lawmaker, who like several others interviewed for this article requested anonymity because they were departing from the Democrats' public position. "I don't think people see a close vote here."

In a reflection of the mildness of the Democrats' message, a set of party talking points circulated last week to Senate offices included no specific criticism of the nominee but simply called for "an honest look at John Roberts's record" -- which they say is made harder by the Bush administration's refusal to release some documents from the nominee's work as a government lawyer in GOP administrations.

Not without risk

"A thorough review of Roberts's record is required to guarantee that Judge Roberts will support the rights and freedoms of all Americans if he is confirmed," the memo says. "The Bush Administration must stop playing games over the release of documents; a lifetime appointment to the highest court is too important."

The Democrats' plan is not without risk. Outside strategists working with the White House said that if an overwhelming majority of Democrats vote for Roberts, Republicans will be able to argue in future confirmation fights that the opposition has taken ideology off the table as a relevant factor. In addition, many party activists outside Washington are eager for senators to show more backbone against President Bush.

The Democrats' decision to hold their fire -- less a formal strategy than an emerging consensus -- has allowed conservatives to husband their resources for future battles. Progress for America, a political group working closely with the White House, had planned to spend $18 million to promote the confirmation of Roberts but now plans to spend less than half that, according to Republican aides.

Democrats said that instead of mounting a headlong assault on Roberts, they plan to use the hearings and the surrounding attention by the news media to remind voters of their party's values, including the protection of rights for individual Americans. The plan calls for emphasizing rights beyond abortion in an effort to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate.

A 27-page document circulating among Republicans and conservatives compiles senators' public statements about Roberts to come up with what White House allies are calling their unofficial "whip count": 56 senators are positively inclined to support Roberts, with 44 of those solid and 12 senators leaning toward Roberts. That leaves 34 unknowns. But eight of those are Republicans who have made no public statement, and nine of them are Democrats who have made positive comments about Roberts's demeanor, intellect or integrity. So the pool of potential outright opponents could be as few as 27 senators, according to the Republican analysis.

Serving notice to Bush

Without question, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee will subject Roberts to intense grilling -- and the discovery of new and damaging information about Roberts could dramatically change the strategy. But for now, Democratic lawmakers say they are less interested in opposing Roberts than in serving notice to Bush that they would react very differently if a more overtly conservative choice were made for a future Supreme Court vacancy.

Officially, Democrats say they are taking no position until next month's hearings. But they do not dispute that the selection of Roberts did not present them with obvious ammunition against the White House. "There were some potential candidates with a record of hostility to fundamental rights who would have been opposed flat out by a majority of the Democratic caucus from Day One. Judge Roberts was not on that list," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "It doesn't mean he's getting a free pass.

"There's nothing the White House would rather have seen than having us come out reflexively swinging at a nominee in order to accuse us of politicizing the debate," Manley added. "There was a strategic decision to keep our powder dry, to reserve judgment until the committee does its work. We want Democrats to be able to fight on principles, not politics."

But the minority party's signals so far suggest acquiescence. When the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America released an incendiary ad about the nominee last week, a number of prominent liberals joined conservatives in condemning the ad as misleading, and the spot was canceled after elected Democrats offered NARAL no support.

Republicans have growing confidence that Roberts will have smooth passage. "We all assume he'll be confirmed," said Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice, which is working to secure Roberts's confirmation. "It's about padding the margin." The Democratic consensus not to mount a major fight comes in part from a calculation that the party would be in a stronger position to oppose a future -- and perhaps more clearly conservative -- nominee if they did not mount a full-scale and likely futile assault on Roberts. Also in the calculation, they say, is the lack of outcry about Roberts from liberal interests and a desire to keep the focus on issues such as Iraq and gas prices, where Bush is more vulnerable.

Democratic silence is not, by itself, a guarantee of support. The opposition to the failed Robert Bork nomination in 1987 was evident from the start, but protests of Clarence Thomas in 1991 were slow to build. In early August, 1991, a month after President George H.W. Bush nominated Thomas, no senator had yet announced opposition. It was not until the fall that controversy erupted over allegations that he had made sexually inappropriate comments to a subordinate. For now, even Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.), one of the more combative Democrats in the chamber, told "Fox News Sunday" two weeks ago that Roberts is "probably a good choice."

Even before Roberts was selected, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said he was the type of nominee who could be considered without a filibuster.

Boxer’s comments

No Democrat has announced opposition to Roberts. The toughest remarks so far were by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) last week at the Golden Gate University School of Law in San Francisco, where she said she must know whether Roberts would support abortion rights and privacy. "If I don't believe he will, I won't vote for him," Boxer said. "I can use all the parliamentary rules I have as a senator to stand up and fight for you."

Democrats say they are not forswearing the possible use of delaying tactics that would require 67 senators to vote to proceed with his confirmation. But Democratic strategists said that barring startling new information about Roberts, they would not have enough votes for a successful filibuster.

Some Democrats would like to see more of a fight. Lanny Davis, a former Clinton legal aide and party official, complained that Democrats are avoiding a showdown with Roberts over ideology by fighting over whether documents will be released from Roberts's time in government. "If they wanted to have a fight on substance they wouldn't be talking about process," Davis said. Democrats, he said, have "either folded or procrastinated to the point where it [opposition] won't have any effect."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[Guest]

http://political.moveon.org/roberts/

[jonerik]

http://political.moveon.org/roberts/

Like I said, "futile."

[Guest]

They will dig something up.....rest assured.

[terrydactyl]

i got no problem with him

[Guest]

i got no problem with him

Sell out.

[Guest]

Roberts scoffed at equal-pay theory

By Joan Biskupic and Toni Locy, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — As an assistant White House counsel in 1984, John Roberts scoffed at the notion that men and women should earn equal pay in jobs of comparable importance, and he belittled three female Republican members of Congress who promoted that idea to the Reagan administration.

The memo from Roberts, now President Bush's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, was a response to a letter that the three women — one of whom was Olympia Snowe of Maine, now a U.S. senator — had sent to the administration. The women had said that the concept of "equal pay for equal work" had not sufficiently boosted women's wages because women were not in many of the same fields as men. The three were promoting the notion of equal pay for different jobs of comparable value, based on factors such as skills and responsibility.

In his memo to White House counsel Fred Fielding, Roberts said the women's letter "contends that more is required because women still earn only $0.60 for every $1 earned by men, ignoring the factors that explain that apparent disparity, such as seniority, the fact that many women frequently leave the work force for extended periods of time. ... I honestly find it troubling that three Republican representatives are so quick to embrace such a radical redistributive concept. Their slogan may as well be, 'From each according to his ability, to each according to her gender.' "

The Feb. 20, 1984, memo from Roberts was among 5,393 pages of records released Monday by the National Archives that were from Roberts' work during the Reagan administration in the early 1980s.

The records, which have been stored at the Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif., did not include material from Roberts' tenure as deputy U.S. solicitor general from 1989 to 1993, a period in which he took part in cases involving abortion rights, school desegregation and religion in public places. Senate Democrats and the Bush administration continue to wrangle over the release of those papers. The administration has withheld the documents, saying that to release them would breach the attorney-client relationship.

Monday's papers reinforced the portrait of Roberts that emerged in previous releases of documents from his government work two decades ago, before he went on to a career in private practice and then became a judge on a U.S. appeals court. The papers show him as a young aide eager to advance Reagan's conservatism on civil rights, school prayer and women's rights.

Roberts' tone on some women's issues contrasts with that of Sandra Day O'Connor, the justice whom Roberts would succeed. As an Arizona legislator, she complained about women's low wages. As the court's first female justice, she voted for affirmative action and broadly interpreted federal law protecting girls from bias in school programs.

Roberts' memo in the debate over "comparable worth" in wages arose after a U.S. trial judge in Washington state ruled that federal anti-discrimination law required equal pay for men and women who held different jobs that required comparable skills and effort. Reagan officials were considering whether to urge an appeals court to reverse the ruling.

Snowe — along with Nancy Johnson, who is still a House member from Connecticut, and Claudine Schneider, who represented Rhode Island — wanted the ruling to stand and urged the Reagan administration to stay out of the case. (In the end, the administration did not intervene. An appeals court reversed the trial judge's decision.)

In a statement Monday, Snowe said that she recently had a "productive conversation" with Roberts "on a range of issues." She added, "Hopefully, 21 years later, Judge Roberts possesses an openness with respect to issues of gender-based wage discrimination."

[smcd]

http://political.moveon.org/roberts/

Exactly the reason the Democrat party is in the shit. Orgainizations like this.

[terrydactyl]

i got no problem with him

Sell out.

the way i see it he'll become the next souter since bush doesnt seem to be able to do anything right

[Guest]

http://political.moveon.org/roberts/

Exactly the reason the Democrat party is in the shit. Orgainizations like this.

Democrats in the shit? How about "most unpopular 2nd term president".

[smcd]

http://political.moveon.org/roberts/

Exactly the reason the Democrat party is in the shit. Orgainizations like this.

Democrats in the shit? How about "most unpopular 2nd term president".

Really?? I suspect you lack an education in history. Remember Richard Nixon?
(That's a rhetorical question posed strictly to point out your, um... lack of understanding)

Do remember that opinion polls change overnight, and that Bush is a second term President. Not only that, but we are just short of 1-1/2 years away from the mid-term elections.

Do you remember what Clintons approval numbers were in the middle of his first term? No? Around 34%. What were his numbers when the next election cycle rolled around?? About 47%.

That's your history lesson for today. So, if I were you, I'd be changing that to a !

[Guest]

AP:
Indeed, Republicans in Congress already are starting to fret about the 2006 election. If Bush's approval ratings sink lower, more of them may be unwilling to go along with his major initiatives for fear it could cause backlash for them with voters.

Bush's job approval in recent polls ranges from the low- to mid-40s. It was 42 percent in the latest AP-Ipsos poll. His ratings on everything from handling Iraq to the economy to
Social Security and other domestic issues are at their lowest levels so far.

Reagan was at 57 percent at this stage of his presidency and Clinton was at 61 percent, according to Gallup polling at the time.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050814/ap_on_...bush_popularity

[Guest]

Lowest approval ratings I could find for Clinton was 51-52%. He hit an all time high of 73% just after impeachment.

[jonerik]

Lowest approval ratings I could find for Clinton was 51-52%. He hit an all time high of 73% just after impeachment. 

His job approval was at 43% in June of '93.

[Guest]

My bad - thought we were talking about 2nd terms here.

Go back to celebrating the demise of the Democrats.

[Guest]

i guess that article in the herald this week talking about bush's unpopularity at this point relative to the past few presidents was a product of liberal media bias

[Defbil]

Couldn't find that Conspiracy THeory thread, so here we go- Roberts was secretly groomed by the far right for the past 15 years or so to be an easily confirmable SCJ. Once he's on the court the right will have control- anyone who has an abortion, smokes pot, or takes any philosophy book out of the library will be sent to Saudi Arabia for interrogation and public execution.

[smcd]

Lowest approval ratings I could find for Clinton was 51-52%. He hit an all time high of 73% just after impeachment. 

Is that why he never got more than 50% of the popular vote??

What resources are you checking? Did you even pay attention to what was going on then???

[smcd]

My bad - thought we were talking about 2nd terms here.

Go back to celebrating the demise of the Democrats. 

I celebrate this, with the witless help of the Democrats, every single day!!

[InLameRockBand]

Lowest approval ratings I could find for Clinton was 51-52%. He hit an all time high of 73% just after impeachment. 

Is that why he never got more than 50% of the popular vote??

What resources are you checking? Did you even pay attention to what was going on then???

perot

[the other dave]

http://political.moveon.org/roberts/

Exactly the reason the Democrat party is in the shit. Orgainizations like this.

Oh, and the Republicans aren't affiliated with groups of wackos? Check out these nutbags.

GOP Voting Wackos Who Support Terrorism

[smcd]

Lowest approval ratings I could find for Clinton was 51-52%. He hit an all time high of 73% just after impeachment. 

Is that why he never got more than 50% of the popular vote??

What resources are you checking? Did you even pay attention to what was going on then???

perot

Most of Perot's votes would have ended up in Bush 41's slate.

Either way, it doesn't matter, every Perot vote was a Not Clinton vote.

[smcd]

http://political.moveon.org/roberts/

Exactly the reason the Democrat party is in the shit. Orgainizations like this.

Oh, and the Republicans aren't affiliated with groups of wackos? Check out these nutbags.

GOP Voting Wackos Who Support Terrorism

MoveOn.org has a lot more money and influence than Operation Rescue will ever have.

[Guest]

My bad - thought we were talking about 2nd terms here.

Go back to celebrating the demise of the Democrats. 

I celebrate this, with the witless help of the Democrats, every single day!!

It IS good to see that Bush has come up from being the most unpopular 2nd term-er since WW2 (March) to slightly more popular than Nixon.

Cheers!

[smcd]

My bad - thought we were talking about 2nd terms here.

Go back to celebrating the demise of the Democrats. 

I celebrate this, with the witless help of the Democrats, every single day!!

It IS good to see that Bush has come up from being the most unpopular 2nd term-er since WW2 (March) to slightly more popular than Nixon.

Cheers!

I think you've been exposed as not knowing what you're talking about.

Keep on thinkin' those good thoughts, though...