Joe Conason: Let’s Have a Real Debate About the Court

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/before_a_new_justice_is_chosen_20100414/

Let’s Have a Real Debate About the Court

Posted on Apr 14, 2010

By Joe Conason

snip//


Targets of the “constitutional conservatives” would certainly include civil rights legislation that guarantees equal protection under law to minorities and women, with right-wing zealots, especially in the South, speaking openly again about state’s rights—the old code for racist oppression and segregation.

A serious debate would highlight this extremism, which Democrats, independents and Republicans alike have rejected for most of the past five decades. (Retiring Justice Stevens was a Republican nominee, placed on the court by Gerald Ford and confirmed unanimously.)

A serious debate might also reveal the incoherence of a right-wing jurisprudence that deprives government of the power to address basic national problems even as it empowers the president in wartime with absolute and monarchical authority.

In a recent memo on the upcoming Supreme Court battle, political theorist William Galston, pollster Stan Greenberg and demographic analyst Ruy Teixeira urge their fellow Democrats not to back away from a constitutional debate. They warn that the judicial agenda of the Republican right would undermine not only Social Security and Medicare but the separation of church and state and the very rule of law in America.

“Democrats can—and must—respond firmly and categorically to this extremist philosophy,” write the three strategists. “They must respond by saying that the Democratic Party proudly upholds the traditional American view of the Constitution—the view of the founding fathers of this country—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams.”

Upheld by Republicans as well, from Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, those principles encompass religious freedom for everyone regardless of sect or creed; the capacity of elected representatives to legislate for the common good; and the protection of individual liberty within a framework of enforceable laws.

So yes, let the debate rip—and let the exposure of the radicalism of the right begin.

[CTyankee]

1. The problem could come down to the nitty gritty with a nominee.

Nothing is ever presented objectively as a debate over the "capacity of elected representatives to legislate for the common good" or "protection of individual liberty within a framework of enforceable laws." We TRY but the RW shrieks and turns it into a nightmare scenario and scares the bejesus out of everyone. THAT, in my estimation, is the real problem.

I wish it were different and I am one who favors getting a real progressive on the court...but we had better have anticipated the RW's capacity to distort and have our talking points all lined up...we cannot have any illusions that there a reasonable debate will proceed...