The Democrats' Preemptive War
SWANSON, JAMES L.
The Democrats' Preemptive War Bush's Supreme Court nominees are under attack before they're even named. BY JAMES L. SWANSON THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL Committee has just declared war on President...
...with the Court already hanging in a delicate balance, any change puts our most fundamental freedoms at risk...
...BY JAMES L. SWANSON THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL Committee has just declared war on President Bush's first nominee to the U.S...
...First they induce panic in their followers by declaring a state of emergency: "Bush will name ultra-conservative nominees who will vote quickly to overturn decades of Supreme Court protections of our cherished American values...
...Finally, the DNC site pairs misleading words with emotional imagery...
...The "Supreme Court Countdown" (www.demo-crats.org/scotus) is part of an unprecedented political campaign to thwart a president from appointing any justices to the High Court...
...if a vacancy occurs, President Bush will simply nominate a replacement for the retiring justice, which the Constitution requires him to do...
...No, they're "extremists," "way out of the mainstream," or, worst of all, "extremist right-wing ideologues" who display "hostility to Constitutional rights" and "attack working families...
...The DNC's site boasts that it is part of a preemptive "campaign that is vital to defeating extremist nominees to the Supreme Court...
...With the "Supreme Court Countdown," the left's accelerating politi-cization of judicial nominations has reached a new low...
...The authors of the "Supreme Court Countdown" employ classic propaganda tactics...
...at the Lincoln Memorial, of African Americans being subdued by fire-hoses, Norman Rockwell's painting of an American everyman speaking at a town meeting, a teacher, and hands clasped in prayer—as though the president's judicial nominees would silence King, turn Bull Connor's hoses back on, censor public debate, close classrooms, and forbid prayer...
...who seek to politicize our federal courts by undermining the president's ability to staff the federal judiciary with judges who follow law, not politics...
...Yes, it has gone that far...
...As the website tallies up the rights that George W. Bush seeks to destroy— including free speech, civil rights, voting rights, religious freedom, and more—it flashes images of Martin Luther King Jr...
...Then they distort history...
...Court packing," of course, was the invention of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who tried unsuccessfully in 1937 to add six new justices to the Supreme Court...
...The DNC never refers to the president's appellate or potential Supreme Court nominees as simply "Republicans" or "conservatives...
...The DNC accuses President Bush of wanting to "pack" the Supreme Court...
...The current danger level is "HIGH: High Risk to American Values," just one step below the maximum danger of "SEVERE: Severe Risk of Right-Wing Court...
...The graphic climax is a bar chart— the "Supreme Court Advisory Sys-tem"—which, in grotesque mimicry of the Department of Homeland Security's terrorist warning system, purports to assess the threat level of a Bush-packed Court...
...his choices for the nation's highest court will be way out of the mainstream...
...Why now...
...We're invited to believe that President Bush's appointment of a Supreme Court justice is tantamount to terrorism...
...Because the DNC fears that one or more justices might retire when the Court's term ends in late June...
...There is no vacancy to fill and no nominee to attack...
...But how can that be...
...it is no secret that, for the past two years, Senate Democrats have been readying to oppose Bush's first Supreme Court nominee...
...our most precious and fundamental rights are in danger...
...The threat, though, comes not from President Bush or his putative High Court nominees, but from those James L. Swanson is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor in chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review...
...Well, that doesn't matter, according to the DNC's new website "Supreme Court Countdown," because the real enemy is George W. Bush...
...But now they aren't waiting for an actual vacancy and nomination...
...The DNC is right about one thing —core constitutional values are in danger...
...indeed, the site screams, "American Values Are at Risk Under a Bush-Packed Supreme Court...
...Next, they smear those they oppose with labels...
Vol. 8 • May 2003 • No. 35
