In the Bush Administration pushback on ScAlito (he has taken some major hits already), the "outside the White House" pushback is being led by Conservative shill Stuart Taylor (I use "shill" deliberately here because too many people want to treat Stuart Taylor as some nonpartisan. His dishonest work on Monicagate, when he
failed to disclose his
ties to Kenneth Starr tells you all you need to know about his credibility).
It is important to understand who and what Stuart Taylor is because I suspect he will be leading the Conservative charge on ScAlito in January. And what line is Taylor shilling now for the Wingnuts? That the "liberal media" is unfairly labeling ScAlito as a conservative ideologue with credibility problems.
Of course, coming from a shill like Taylor, the facts have little room in his argument.
I'll explain on the flip.
Taylor has started the pushback already and writes this
dishonest piece in the National Journal this week:
Through various mixes of factual distortions, tendentious wording, and uncritical parroting of misleading attacks by liberal critics, some (but not all) reporters insinuate that Alito is a slippery character who will say whatever senators want to hear, especially by "distancing himself" from past statements that (these reporters imply) show him to be a conservative ideologue.
I focus here not on the consistently mindless liberal hysteria of the New York Times' editorial page. Nor on such egregious factual errors as the assertion on C-SPAN, by Stephen Henderson of Knight Ridder Newspapers . . .
Lovely how he doesn't "focus" on these things while, writing, in his consistently mindless Wingnut hysterical style about them. What, in Taylor's strange mind, does he actually focus on?
A December 3 Washington Post front-pager by Charles Babington stressed Alito's supposed effort to "distance himself" from two 1985 documents in which he had asserted that (among other things) "I am and always have been a conservative" and "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion." Babington added that this distancing "may expose him to accusations of insincerity or irresolution, advocates said."
Indeed. Articles such as Babington's have fueled a clamor about Alito's supposed "credibility gap" by liberal groups and attack-dog senators like Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. Liberal editorialists and columnists have joined in.
Such suggestions of insincerity are not based on anything that Alito has said. They are based on misleading characterizations by reporters of what senators say Alito has said in private meetings with them. Needless to say, some of these senators are spinning their own agendas.
What a bunch of BS. It was the White House that has tried to distance ScAlito from the 1985 memo and job application. Don't believe me? How about the very conservative Bruce Fein in that "liberal" rag the Washington Times?
As Senate confirmation hearings approach, the president and his nominee have disingenuously disowned the memorandum as a legally sound attack on the homonymic school and its outlandish applications. They are yielding the battle over constitutional interpretation to arch-liberal Democrats, and placing a cloud over confirmation by indulging in intellectual acrobatics. If there are better ways to squander the opportunity to alter constitutional law decisively with the O'Connor vacancy, they do not readily come to mind.
Is Bruce Fein "mindlessly liberal" too Taylor? What a shill Taylor is.
How about anti-choice activist Janet Larue?
Janet M. LaRue of the conservative group Concerned Women for America said she is not bothered that Alito is putting space between himself and his 20-year-old memos. "I would have been surprised if he had said anything else," she said. All her group wants, she said, is a judge "to make an objective ruling based on the law and the facts. It's a joke for the left to pretend that none of their favorite judges have deeply held beliefs."
Is she a "mindless liberal" too? Who the hell are you kidding Taylor? But we know you. You are a Right Wing shill.
Oh by the way, do you have a word to spare about this lying campaign?
Several conservative groups, meanwhile, plan a major push beginning Monday to portray Alito's opponents as anti-God. Talking points for the effort, which will involve ads and grass-roots organizations, were laid out in a strategy memo by Grassfire.org, which opposes abortion and same-sex marriage. Alito's opponents are united by "an agenda to purge any and all references to religion from our public life," the memo says.
Of course not. Shilling for the Right requires ignoring the obvious. For example, Taylor argues:
[Alito] is a judge who -- while surely too conservative for the taste of liberal ideologues -- is widely admired by liberals, moderates, and conservatives who know him well as fair-minded, committed to apolitical judging, and wedded to no ideological agenda other than restraint in the exercise of judicial power.
"Widely admired"? That's just a lie. Jay Sekulow, gloating in triumph over the stomping of Harriet Miers because she did not have Wingnut bona fides, told the truth when ScAlito was nominated:
President Bush promised that he would nominate justices in the mold of Justices (Antonin) Scalia and (Clarence) Thomas. In choosing Judge Alito for the high court, President Bush has done just that," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel to the American Center.
Scalia, Thomas and ScAlito - peas in a pod. That is the truth. Don't expect any truth from Taylor.