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Growing Discontent on Roberts’ Selection

I don’t know who makes me sicker – President Bush or the “conservatives” who continue to back him and his sell-out choice for the U.S. Supreme Court. The conservatives eagerly jumped in to throw their support to the unknown John Roberts as soon as the choice to replace Sandra Day O’Connor was announced. On what […]

I don’t know who makes me sicker – President Bush or the “conservatives” who continue to back him and his sell-out choice for the U.S. Supreme Court.

The conservatives eagerly jumped in to throw their support to the unknown John Roberts as soon as the choice to replace Sandra Day O’Connor was announced.

On what basis? The guy was a blank slate – like David Souter and Anthony Kennedy before him.

Then, last week, the Los Angeles Times broke the story that Roberts had volunteered his services – pro bono – to help prepare a landmark homosexual activist case to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. ~Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily.com

It is understandable that Mr. Farah would be this upset over the selection of John Roberts, especially in light of this latest story, but it only begs the question of what conservatives actually thought they were going to get from Mr. Bush. Why should they have expected him to honour his word on this, when he so completely betrayed his promises of a “humble” foreign policy and limited spending? Roberts appears to be an archetypical lawyer, who is undoubtedly terribly professional to the point of being perfectly comfortable in taking any side on any case. Look for Judge Roberts to be hailed in a few decades, when he retires, as the pragmatic “swing vote” on the Court whose positions, like those of Justice O’Connor, “evolved,” no doubt to match those “evolving standards of decency.”

The initial sighs of relief on the right after the selection of Roberts had two causes. First, Bush had not selected a nominee as ludicrous as Alberto Gonzales, which made the grassroots adulation over the man he did choose that much greater. Only relatively principled conservative pundits and observers who paid attention to the details of Roberts’ career were skeptical and then hostile. Second, Roberts was an establishment Republican, which relieved most of the connected pundits and politicos that there would be much work involved in getting him confirmed and also assured them that he would not be making any trouble for the federal government once approved. “In the mold of Scalia and Thomas,” my foot! Evidently, they broke that mould after the Thomas confirmation hearings.

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