The Last Redoubt

Jed Babbin on liberals and John Roberts:

By elevating the Roberts nomination to the chief justice's job, the president has made the Roberts fight one the libs must win, and they won't. Roberts will be confirmed (probably not in time for the first day of the court's session next month), but soon after that. And when the president nominates another conservative to replace O'Connor, the libs will be fighting for their political lives.

There will be little or no room for them to maneuver around their core constituencies. The NARALs, the PFAWs, and the rest will be shrieking for a filibuster because they realize that with Roberts, Thomas, and a third young conservative (Thomas is only 57), President Bush will be able to stock the Roberts Court with enough conservatives to clearly deprive the libs of their last hold on American government. Their hysteria will be palpable, their rhetoric confused and destructive. There will be a filibuster, unless the president does what they want and nominates a liberal. Which he won't do.

No Democrat -- not even Slippary Hillary -- will be able to hide. Anyone who wants the allegiance of the hard-core left, and any Democrat who expects to gain the presidency must have it, won't be able to take a tempered position. Every one of them will be flushed from cover and revealed as the doctrinaire hyperliberals they really are. There are already demands that the next nominee be chosen on the basis of gender or race, or both. The president must ignore the demands and the threats they imply, and choose a conservative with a clear record of judicial restraint and constitutional fealty. To do less will violate the trust placed in him in the 2004 election by the Americans who turned out to vote against judicially imposed liberalism. Tens of millions will be spent, by Soros and the rest, to defeat the second conservative nominee. There will be so many television ads non-Americans should be forgiven for thinking the '08 presidential race will have already begun. And it literally will have.

This fight should be liberalism's last stand. Conservatives will need to fight for any provably conservative nominee with that focused constantly in their minds.

Dubya is a very gifted politician. Why does the Left constantly underestimate him when he wins time and again?

I well remember Bill Clinton's eight years in office, and at least the Republicans managed to seize control of Congress during this time. Bush just keeps pitching no-hitters while our team runs away with the game.