IT'S THE JUDICIARY, STUPID:

Bush Places Senate's Delays on Judicial Appointees at Core of Campaigning (NEIL A. LEWIS, October 16, 2002, NY Times)

President Bush's ability to shape the federal bench, at stake in the November election, is heating up this year's election campaigns.

Frustrated by Senate Democrats' blocking conservative judicial candidates, Mr. Bush is putting the issue at the core of his efforts on behalf of Republican candidates, hoping to use it to put the Senate back in his party's control.

"The Senate is doing a lousy job on my judge nominations," the president said on Monday at a campaign stop in Michigan in remarks that he echoes in state after state.

There are many "reasons why we need to change the Senate," he added. One was "to make sure that the federal bench represents the way you want them to serve."

[White House counsel, Alberto R.] Gonzales said the White House would not change the kind of nominees it chose. "These are the kind of judicial candidates the American people want," he said.

Conservatives have been frustrated for twenty years by the failure of even folks like Ronald Reagan to put the makeup of the judiciary at the center of electoral politics. This is yet another way in which Mr. Bush's instincts serve him well in appealing at least to the Right, and one suspects that just by listing the decisions of the 9th Circuit you could horrify voters about what anti-democratic mischief liberal judges are capable of perpetrating. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 16, 2002 12:22 PM