Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Please Do My Homework for Me--Part 2

My thinking on the election of 2008: Pete makes an excellent point below. To some extent McCain can campaign against the risks involved in giving the whole government to the Democrats, but there are limits to that approach. People clearly do want change--not gridlock, but some results on various public policy fronts. Maybe the biggest example is health care. So it seems to me that McCain is going to have to become a "can do" man on that issue. In fact he is, at least on his website: He has a clear view of why and how we need to abandon the present employer-based health care system. Mac is going to have to make that view comfortably his own in speech and push it on the stump.

Where the gridlock argument is most attractive: People clearly respond to arguments against activist judges, and Mac needs to become even more clear on who they are and what’s wrong with appointing them. So he needs to become clearer and more aggressive on what’s wrong with ROE, saying more than he believes that babies have human rights from conception. There will be no limits on judicial activism--on ROE-based judicial legislation--if Obama is elected. (Here, I tentatively agree with Ken, the campaign might be directed to some extent against Biden, at least to certain kind of audience.)

So, with your help, I’ve decided to devote my time at the APSA to talk some about judicial activism and a bit more about genuinely conservative health care reform.

Discussions - 6 Comments

I would suggest that McCain (and conservatives in general) talk more about 2008s KENNEDY (in which the Supreme Court banned the death penalty for child molestors) and HELLER cases.

In KENNEDY, the Supreme Court invalidated state laws that (I suspect) a majority of the public likes and substituted its own "evolving standards" of decency - in practice the will of five justices. By attacking KENNEDY, conservatives put themselves on the right side of both the rule of law and popular opinion.

HELLER pretty much everyone knows, but the four liberal judges voted to pretty much cripple a right specifically mentioned in the Constitution. By attacking the liberal judges, conservatives can stand up for a right that most people (according to opinion polls) believe is an individual right.

Now Obama disagreed with the court liberals on KENNEDY and HELLER (he isn't stupid) but nobody doubts that the Supreme Court justices that Obama might appoint would vote as the court liberals did. There is no reason not to hold him accountable for that. McCain (and conservatives) should make it clear that an Obama Supreme Court would endanger both the death penalty and the Second Amendment. This also serves to reintroduce two issues in which the majority of the public is in tune with conservatives and have been absent from the campaign.

At least as important, KENNEDY and HELLER give conservatives a way of talking about judicial liberalism without having to constantly reference ROE, which can get old after a while.

ENERGY is the key issue.

PETER, Roe was symptomatic, it wasn't a catalyst for what came after. There's a whole host of issues where the judiciary is carving their own policy, charting their own course, in clear contravention with the will of the electorate. McCain shouldn't be out there using Roe as THE example of a judiciary that has overreached itself. It should be one of several examples. Remember that we're trying to win some votes from Hillary's supporters who are livid with the Democrat party. So this is not the time, nor the place, to initiate a war on Roe.

HOWEVER, narrowing the issue to partial birth abortion addresses the issue while skating clear of blasting away at Roe itself. A little caginess is entirely in order right about now.

To the extent that the issue of abortion arises, Republicans would do well to narrow the subject to partial birth abortion. And to expose how Obama has lied to the American people, all in an effort to conceal his inhumane attitudes. For on that more narrow subject, Obama, wholly beholden to the more grisly elements of his party, stands FAR outside the mainstream of American thought.

Find 80/20s and 60/40s, and use them as wedges to display the radical, thoroughly radical attitudes of the Democrat nominee.

Biden's task is to attack the GOP ticket, and to mask the reality that Obama is a Leftist, and the MOST radical nominee in American history, {including even Henry Wallace!}.

McCain's task has to be to educate the public about Obama, who he is, where he's from, who his friends are, who his mentors were.

Expose Barrack Hussein Obama, do a thorough job of it, and the election is in the bag. This isn't rocket science........

two excellent comments. I will say something about the other cases and about energy.

Since Roe v. Wade is established law, the judicial activism is on the part of those seeking to overturn it. If the intellectual poverty of the APSA is so great, and you are still searching for topics, how about stepping outside the bubble of right-wing blog sites? Maybe address the family fictions of the fundamentalists? The wholesome, stable, nuclear heterosexual family championed by the Christian fundamentalists never existed in the United States. The traditional family values that served as their ideological foundation for the last 20 years is a pastiche derived more from false television consciousness than from any real historical experiences. It is a fictional image projected upon the past, like Disney's "Main Street USA." The return to traditional values is not backward looking at all but a forward looking invention. In this way they are exactly the same as Islamic fundamentalists, in that they are actually not a return to original values or practices but the construction of new values against an existing social order. The anti-modern thrust that unites Christian and Islamic fundamentalists is better understood not as a pre-modern but an entirely postmodern project. Maybe you can discuss that while waiting in line at the book tables and comparing elbow-patches on your professor jackets.

Stertinius,

Would you say the same about Plessy? or Dread Scott? Or what about the recent ruling in Lawerence, {which caused so much joy in certain Democrat precincts in the San Francisco and Boston Bay areas.....}.

You would do well not to wander down the the path of legal analysis, ---------- least not 'round these parts.....................

"Since Roe v. Wade is established law, the judicial activism is on the part of those seeking to overturn it."

That is a 'DUH' statement. Same thing happens all the time when the Supreme Court overturns itself.

It is like fighting fire with fire, if you will.

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