Carpe Diem, Dubya

Jed Babbin wants to see the President take the offensive in the battles ahead:

It matters enormously, in every non-political sense, who President Bush nominates to succeed "moderate" Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. But politically it matters not at all. We are about to endure a Supreme Court confirmation that will make the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention look tame. Only a day after O'Connor announced her retirement, and without a successor in sight, NOW president Kim Gandy declared a state of emergency regarding women's rights. Soon we'll see everything from the Million Mooron March on Washington to a Senate filibuster showdown that the President may not win. This is win or go home time for Dubya. To win, the President needs to adapt his war strategy to his politics: the best defense against the coming liberal onslaught is a good offense. One that absorbs much of the Senate's excess energy and corners the liberals in the same way they were cornered last year.

The President should take the offense in the Supreme Court fight for one simple reason: the libs are vastly more vulnerable politically than he is. If he allows them to dominate politics with the confirmation process, they may win that fight and too many others. Decisive, forceful leadership on the Court and other issues is the way to stop the Deanocrats in their tracks. The President's victory last November is attributable, in no small part, to social conservatives who voted not so much for Mr. Bush as against legalizing same-sex marriages, against courts that toy with the Pledge of Allegiance, and against a man who they obviously could not rely on to defend their personal freedoms at home or their nation abroad. When the President nominates someone who produces howls and shrieks from NOW, Michael Moore, and Howard Dean, the Americans who re-elected George Bush in November can be re-energized, and the libs again defeated.

For this to work, the GOP needs to take off the gloves and fight like they mean it. That means trouncing Dem dummies like Boxer, Reid, and the other dim bulbs the Senate Dems have no choice but to put before the public in hearings which the MSM won't be able to edit into a highlight reel for progressives. The more the public sees of drunken fools like Teddy Kennedy lecturing candidates who've somehow managed to not drown anyone in all their years of public service, we win. Period.

This is the Democrats' Battle of Berlin. If they lose the Court, they have no hand on the levers of power in this country anymore. They're all but dead as a national party when that happens, as they want nothing more than political power. It's the glue which bonds them.

We'll find out soon if Dubya has the stones to take them out.