Out of the Mainstream

Wendy E. Long wrote a great piece,"Jurists: Fair and Mainstream," that appeared on May 22, in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

(Excerpts)

When it comes to judges, Democrat Sens. Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, Pat Leahy, John Kerry, John Edwards, Harry Reid and company just won't budge.

...The Democrats still refuse to vote on President Bush's most important and highly qualified nominees to the federal courts of appeal.

Why? They claim it's because these judges, such as Justice Priscilla Owen of Texas and Justice Janice Rogers Brown of California, are "extreme."

...Truth is, Democrats are hiding from a debate, and hiding from a vote, precisely because these highly qualified judges are the mainstream. They are intellectual stars on the courts where they now sit. They have the overwhelming bipartisan support of the citizens of their states, the American Bar Association, the bench and bar, and newspapers across the political spectrum. For example, even the Washington Post endorsed Judge Owen after President Bush nominated her to the Fifth Circuit, and the San Francisco Chronicle endorsed Judge Brown in her latest California Supreme Court election.

Most important, Justices Owen and Brown have demonstrated their inclination to "judicial restraint": They merely apply the rules that we, the people, make. They don't make the rules themselves. That's a job for Congress and the president, who must respond to the will of the citizens who elected them.

Judges, on the other hand, are supposed to be neutral: They take those rules that we make, in our representative democracy, and apply them to disputes. That's why our federal judges are appointed for life: so that they can be impartial and feel no pressure when applying the rules the people have made. Federal judges undermine the Constitution and subvert our representative democracy if they invent their own rules and essentially change the laws like politicians.

...The liberals have lost the presidency, lost the Senate, and will surely continue to lose ballot initiatives. That is why they are so desperate to retain a grip on the federal judiciary: so they can impose on the rest of us policies that are decidedly not "mainstream."

My dictionary defines "mainstream" as "a prevailing current or direction of activity or influence" - like the "prevailing direction of activity" reflected in the map of red states following the 2004 elections, and like the "prevailing current" that carried South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle, who blocked the President's mainstream judicial nominees in the last Congress, out of Washington and swept in Sen. John Thune, who better represented their views.

Schumer and friends are certainly free to dislike mainstream judges, mainstream presidents, and mainstream voters. But these liberals are the ones who are "outside the mainstream."
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Democrats know they can't win at the ballot box, which explains their complete breakdown over Bush's judicial nominees.

They keep whining about "one-party rule." With all due respect, that is utterly lame. Did Dems complain about a power grab when they controlled the Presidency, the House, and the Senate? As Long points out, the only hope Dems have of imposing their out of the mainstream policies on the rest of America is through the process of legislating by judicial fiat.

Simply put, if Democrats believed they had concrete ideas and a direction for the country that would appeal to the majority of Americans, they would focus on winning elections. Instead, they rely on activist judges to make their out of the mainstream agenda a reality.

On the Senate floor on May 19, Ted Kennedy said, "There is a radical right out there that is loose in the country. They feel they won the presidency, the House of Representatives, the Senate of the United States, and by God, they're going to take over the independent judiciary."

What Teddy doesn't seem to comprehend is that the American people elected a Republican President, House, and Senate. There's no conspiracy or power grab. The American people gave Republicans power, including the power of the Executive branch to nominate judges and the power of the Legislative branch to advise and consent and vote on the nominees.

The Dems would like to frame the issue as a power grab by Republicans.

They need to face the fact that the AMERICAN PEOPLE gave Republicans power.