The editor of WingNutDaily is not amused:
John Roberts still has most conservatives buffaloed.
They just can’t believe George W. Bush would betray them so boldly.
But he has.
Even I, the ultimate skeptic, am just beginning to fathom the extent of the shell game that has been played on conservatives – most of whom are actively working on behalf of the confirmation of a new chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who will make Ruth Bader Ginsberg look like a moderate.
That’s right.
Up until now, I’ve been comparing Roberts to Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter. I’ve got news for you. He’s worse.
[snip]
“Putting politics aside, the current court member Roberts most resembles is Stephen Breyer. Roberts is far more intellectual than Rehnquist, far more politic than Scalia, and – as noted above – far less extreme than Thomas.”Stephen Breyer. That’s who Roberts most resembles, according to his friend.
Roberts is a Washington establishment operative who has been fooling conservatives for much of his life.
In 1981, he worked hand in glove with his good friend Kenneth Starr, another shill for the establishment, to fool President Reagan and the American people into thinking Sandra Day O’Connor was a “conservative,” Reagan Republican. He was a plotter, a co-conspirator, a devious manipulator, a spinner.
Ha ha ha. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha HA!
Bush does not really care about the theocratic ideology of the extreme right because frankly he doesn’t really have to. Bush was installed by and is beholden to big business and their K Street lobbyists, who live by the Coolidge Doctrine: “The business of America is business.” Not religion. The kowtowing to the extremists is just a handy tactic from the Rove playbook, and a way to ensure that issues get framed in a thoroughly Right way. And really, what are the wingers going to do–vote Democratic?
So the thumpers and theocrats get screwed, badly. But hey, they’re married to him so the Lord don’t mind. But of course they themselves hate it. They thought the Rove reacharound would take them all the way to heaven–but just like Dobson’s wife, they right wing is always left hot, bothered and fundamentally unsatisfied every time the GOP establishment uses them to get their low-tax rocks off. It’s not healthy for our society to sit by and watch this sad co-dependent relationship–but it’s better than the alternative of watching the theocrats get to take the master’s whip to enact the sadistic scene that is their ultimate fantasy. [That’s not just a metaphor–think about how much they loved Mel Gibson’s snuff film!]
This betrayal could not have happened to a more deserving bunch of people, nor could they have had more warning that Bush was quite literally born and bred to play Judas in their twisted little morality play. I mean really–his accent is what real Texans call “all hat and no cattle.” He’s a Connecticut Yankee who went to Andover and Yale. So he talked to Billy Graham during his coke withdrawal–that doesn’t make him a devout evangelical any more than eating matzoh once and a while makes me a Jew.
Bush worships only at the twin altar of a “healthy bidness climate” and military might. Of course he suffers from the delusion that he’s the Second Coming of Reagan, so neither of these tenets of faith have fared too well under his incompetent watch. The economy is in shambles [unless you’re Paris Hilton] and allies and enemies alike can see that America’s military, spread dangerously thing, is being held together with duct tape and bailing wire.
We liberals, progressives and members of the reality-based community need to laugh at them, long and hard– not to gloat, but because it’s the proper response to magical-thinking theocrats who hate the Constitution so much they want it treated like a taxidermied curiosity instead of a dynamic living document. When we laughed at the for the 50 years after the Scopes Monkey Trial they stayed in their churches, attended Bob Jones University and were kept safely outside the mainstream they so want to destroy.
So again– Ha ha ha. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha HA! Oh, and, nanny nanny boo boo. Seriously. I assert that this is not a juvenile response, but rather how one properly deals with those who have the mentality of chidren. The wingers like to treat the Left like children, but their “talking points” are nothing more than schoolyard taunts. This is a moment for the left to stand proudly and say “I’m rubber and you’re glue”–and then go back to the serious business of winning the playground back.
I surmise that the Bush I-era Roberts documents the administration squelched are [like that administration] much more moderate than his Reagan-era writings. Roberts could yet prove to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But having listened to much of today’s hearings, I think the Republic has dodged a bullet. I don’t know exactly how or why, but Bush seems to have nominated someone we can live with.
Live with, if not love… I think we can expect more Casey-esque tinkering around the edges of the “Roe Framework” but no assault on its “central holding.” But he answered the questions about Right to Privacy in a very straightforward manner.
The real battle will be around O’Connor’s replacement… with the far-right enraged, it will be a fight. Especially if we have to fight Torturer-General Gonzales or any of several far right females. But even Gonzales, for all of his love of genital electrodes, is not a rabid right-winger.
Of course there’s also a more immediate political benefit– Roberts’ now-apparent moderation will hurt the president’s approval numbers among his base even more. Could he drop below 30%? It seems imminently possible.
Sorry, but you’re really wrong. I’m what you might consider a four-square member of the President’s conservative base, and I’m a former clerk on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Roberts has answered the questions concerning Roe, Casey, Griswold, and the right to privacy just as I would have wanted to do in his shoes, and I would overturn Roe in a heartbeat. This guy is very clearly the real deal as far as conservatives go, and if you look back, his answers in general are to the right of Thomas’s.
OK, I don’t have RDS’ credentials but even I have to say that I am not comfortable with Roberts. He is that conservative and does not really believe in a “right to privacy.” If he gets on and then some real right wing fruitcake gets O’Connor’s chair, kiss goodbye a whole host of personal/civil and environmental protections. All of the reading that I have done of his previous opinions tell me he is 100% pro-business and anti-government regulation that would protect the rights of the individual and the environment. Personally, I think all of this right wing moaning is a ruse to lull prograssives into thinking that Roberts is OK for us to let in. He’s not – he is too far right for the majority of this country and will happily serve his twin masters of business and the executive branch.