Explanation of mystery: neither Bush nor Cheney is seeking re-election, so
they don't need to coddle their base, which anyway has no place else to go.
But other Republicans will be running, for Congress and also in three years
for president. In many districts it won't help them to have a vote for the
party seen as a vote for Alito and co. So if Bush wants to help maintain
the hold on power of his party--which means greater longevity for his
programs and a longer-term right-wing influence--it behooves him not to
make a point of alienating moderates. Instead he chooses the most naked
confrontation. Given a choice, he always goes for a cock fight. But there's
more than his manhood at stake. Not, as hads been noted before, the
brightest bulb on the tree.
Mark
At 12:08 PM 11/1/2005, you wrote:
>David Latane wrote:
>
>>It's of course the 400th anniversary of the big
>>fizzle--is anyone going to witness the re-enactment of
>>Robin Catesby's ride from London to Ashby St. Legers?
>>Will there be extra bonfires? I'm feeling
>>extra-anti-clerical myself at the moment since if
>>Dubya's Supreme pick is confirmed there will be a vote
>>of 5 old Catholic men on the Court to reverse Roe v.
>>Wade. Of course their Catholicism is probably
>>irrelevant compared to their rightwingism.
>>
>I am mystified. Why is anyone surprised that Bush's choice would be a
>back-to-basics hardliner like Alito? Did you expect him to pick someone
>from the National Lawyer's Guild? At least Alito appears to have the
>stature to be hateable: Miers had no judicial experience whatsover and
>that simpery little smile suggested she'd taken an anvil in head to save
>the life of Wily Coyote.
>
>As for collection of Catholics, maybe. Maybe Bush--like many evangelical
>Protestants--is willing to make Catholics the fall guys for his
>policies. I suspect there is still a profound mistrust of what my rather
>unenlightened neighbor snarlingly calls "the Roman Church." We have not
>gotten far from the 1960 Presidential campaign when Jack Kennedy all but
>had to state he wasn't taking orders from Rome. Of course right-wing
>thinking does not necessarily line up with Catholicism. But again...did
>you think Bush was going to appoint a liberal Catholic jurist or, for that
>matter, a liberal Protestant of any stripe. His objective is to get rid
>of Roe v Wade and he most likely will succeed. How to prevent that is
>another story.
>
>ken
>
>--
>Kenneth Wolman
>Proposal Development Department
>Room SW334
>Sarnoff Corporation
>609-734-2538
> Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
> Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
> W.H. Auden
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