November 15, 2004
SMASHING RECORDS:
Impending war over high court nominees: Ultraconservative Bush choices sure to draw filibusters (Carolyn Lochhead, November 14, 2004, SF Chronicle)
What the record shows is that in the broad area of civil liberties -- gay rights, abortion, affirmative action, establishment of religion -- Bush's record of judicial appointments is the most conservative of any modern president, according to an academic analysis of 70,000 district court opinions by Robert Carp of the University of Houston and other scholars.Bush's judicial choices are more conservative than Republican Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, Carp's analysis showed.
These judges are "extraordinarily conservative, the most conservative of any president I have data for," on civil liberties cases, Carp said. "There is a very, very significant difference, even from Reagan and Bush Sr. judges." [...]
Carp reached his conclusion about the conservative bent of Bush's appointees by reviewing decisions of federal district court judges from 1933-2004. Carp and Professors Kenneth Manning of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and Ronald Stidham of Appalachian State University gleaned cases in which decisions could be universally accepted as liberal, moderate or conservative and published their findings in "Judicature," the journal of the American Judicature Society, a nonpartisan group that examines the courts.
The professors looked at 480 cases decided by Bush appointees on such issues as privacy, free speech and the rights of criminal defendants. The professors found, for example, that the Bush judges decided civil liberties cases in the direction of restricting these rights -- the conservative position -- more than 70 percent of the time. The Bush judges decided criminal justice cases with the conservative position two-thirds of the time. Overall, their decisions were more conservative than any modern president's appointees dating to Lyndon Johnson, the professors wrote.
Time after time George W. Bush demonstrates that he is who conservatives think Ronald Reagan was. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 15, 2004 12:01 AM
And without the creepy children Patti & Ron.
Posted by: Melissa at November 15, 2004 6:47 AMOf course, the professors are so far to the left that you can't see them from here. Enough Carping.
Posted by: Uncle Bill at November 15, 2004 9:01 AMUncle Bill: Carp was on my doctoral comps committee, and is as fair (and tough) a professor as there is on the UH campus. I think it's probably accurate to say he leans left in his personal politics, but it would be very difficult for someone to draw that conclusion based on his impeccable scholarship or his conduct in the classroom. I'm hardly a weenie liberal, but I'll defend Carp's scholarship from attacks that it's "political."
Carp's been doing this sort of analysis forever, he follows a rigorous methodology, and he calls it like he sees it. Conservatives need to be careful not to shout down everything in academia they disagree with as politically motivated -- there are many ideologues on the Left on college campuses, yes, but Bob Carp isn't one of them.
Indeed, the workload he places on students -- especially the amount of reading of actual cases (you know, good old fashioned textual analysis) -- is one of the heaviest on that campus, or any other I would wager. That's an approach for conservatives to applaud.
Posted by: kevin whited at November 15, 2004 10:02 AMUncle Bill: Carp was on my doctoral comps committee, and is as fair (and tough) a professor as there is on the UH campus. I think it's probably accurate to say he leans left in his personal politics, but it would be very difficult for someone to draw that conclusion based on his impeccable scholarship or his conduct in the classroom. I'm hardly a weenie liberal, but I'll defend Carp's scholarship from attacks that it's "political."
Carp's been doing this sort of analysis forever, he follows a rigorous methodology, and he calls it like he sees it. Conservatives need to be careful not to shout down everything in academia they disagree with as politically motivated -- there are many ideologues on the Left on college campuses, yes, but Bob Carp isn't one of them.
Indeed, the workload he places on students -- especially the amount of reading of actual cases (you know, good old fashioned textual analysis) -- is one of the heaviest on that campus, or any other I would wager. That's an approach for conservatives to applaud.
Posted by: kevin whited at November 15, 2004 10:02 AMBush is not worried about a floor fight on 99% of his nominees. There are only 45 Democrats, including the two Nelsons, Landrieu, Lincoln, Prior, Salazar and Bayh. All of the above listed got elected on the grounds that they were not 'San Francisco Democrats.' Should they join the Schumers and the Leahys in a slash-and-burn style opposition to Bush's judicial nominees, we might see a 65-35 GOP Senate by 2008 and all of them would be toast against McCain or any other reasonable GOP nominee. Americans are a people of action and obstructionism is never seen as a plus. Just ask Newt Gingrich.
What Bush will do is informally seek out the advice of Specter or Snowe and say is X ok with you, and if not what is your specific issue with X and how far are you willing to go to oppose X. There is no reason for either Specter or Snowe to be dishonest with him, so we should have a fairly smooth system guaranteeing a more conservative judiciary.
America will never have a judiciary which pleases James Dobson, much less Orrin Judd, but it can easily have one which satisfies the Ralph Reeds of the world.
Posted by: Bart at November 15, 2004 12:17 PM