Get Ready

[WilliamPitt]

Choosing Justice David H. Souter's successor on the Supreme Court is a high-stakes decision. (Photo: Andrea Mohin)

Get Ready
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Friday 08 May 2009

The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.

- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The news of Supreme Court Justice David Souter's imminent retirement hit Washington, DC, to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson, like a dung bomb. Not that there isn't a great sense of excitement over the prospect of what the next few months will almost certainly bring. There is, of course; a Supreme Court nomination is about as high-stakes a game as you get, where political fortunes have been won and lost many times, and with historic consequences. The defeated Bork nomination unleashed twenty years of conservative vengeance, while the successful Thomas nomination signaled the beginning of a long ebb-tide for Democratic Party power and influence.

So there was plenty of excitement after Souter announced, to be sure, but it was tempered by an "Oh, come on, really?" sense of exhaustion and overload. The current workload confronting the Democratic presidential administration and congressional majority can kindly be described as overwhelming already; two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, unrest and Taliban militancy in Pakistan, a domestic auto industry in chaos, a mortgage bailout bill in defeat, and an economy still far from being on the mend have already crowded their front burner, with maybe a dozen or two slightly smaller problems likewise awaiting attention.

A Supreme Court nomination at this point isn't so much like tossing a straw, as it is like tossing a railroad tie, onto the camel's back. These things have always become an all-consuming phenomenon in DC, sucking the oxygen out of virtually everything else that's going on. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats have already put themselves in the position of needing to do fifteen incredibly complicated things exactly right all at once, and now they have this to contend with. Suffice it to say, it will be a busy summer for anyone with a (D) after their name.

For the GOP, however, the advent of a new Supreme Court nomination is as awesome to contemplate as it is terrible, rife with both opportunity and peril for a party in disarray seeking to reinvigorate its presence on the national political stage. Done properly, the Republicans could use the upcoming Obama nomination to the high court as a rallying cry and fundraising bonanza, pulling back together its disparate and demoralized ranks while swelling their campaign coffers on the eve of yet another midterm election season ... or the stresses already present within a fractured GOP could reach breaking strain; if pure-minded conservatives go for the throats of party moderates over culture-war social issues regarding the eventual nominee, the whole party could grind itself into shards and tatters like an old, poorly lubed engine.

The rest: http://www.truthout.org/050809R

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Most excellent, my dear Will!

I'm hoping for their grinding themselves into shards and tatters like an old, poorly lubed engine.

K&R

:patriot:

[bleever]

2. "The life of the law..."

Logic says that separate is fine, if it's equal.

Experience speaks up and says, separate isn't equal.


The funny thing is, logic catches up to experience, and not the other way around.

[Wednesdays]

3. K&R

:kick:

[Hekate]

4. Awesome prospects indeed, Will.

:toast:

Hekate

[Demeter]

5. Obama Could Become The Greatest President Ever and Lighten the Load at Same Time

He could honor his campaign promises and fulfill his potential by getting us out of Iraq AND Afghanistan and breaking the Goldman Sachs plot to take over the world (by euthanizing the zombie banks). And universal health care.

But that's too much to ask, isn't it?

[WilliamPitt]

6. .

[MasonJar]

7. It would be different if it were Scalia. I am disappointed Souter is

leaving.