From Paul Waldman of Media Matters, at
TomPaine.com:
It looks as though the left is determined not only to lose the battle over Alito's nomination, but to make sure that at the end of the day that battle does nothing to aid the progressive movement over the long term.
Waldman's arguments are threefold: First, that the Vanguard case is a poor rallying cry. Second, there is no unifying "story" that opposing groups present against Alito. Finally, a point several authors have made on Daily Kos, no one is forcing conservatives to "own" their positions -- despite the fact that 69 percent of U.S. residents would oppose Alito if they knew he would vote to overturn Roe. This final aspect makes the lack of messaging all the more apparent: our best argument goes unsaid.
Excerpts and supporting examples from today's testimony on the flip.
Why is the Vanguard case ineffective in drumming up opposition?
[L]iberals are going to have an exceedingly hard time convincing large numbers of people that Alito is some kind of crook. He may have cut some ethical corners, but to reject a Supreme Court nominee, the sin involved is going to have to be pretty serious, and like it or not, to most Americans the recusal issue will seem too technical and nit-picky.
If we can't stop Alito from being confirmed, what's the best outcome?
In this scenario, Alito ultimately gets confirmed, but not before a debate that makes it crystal clear to the public just what the conservative vision of the Supreme Court entails: overturning Roe, a dramatic narrowing of civil liberties and the president invested with the power to ignore the laws he finds inconvenient.
How can demonstrate Republicans' own arguments to the rest of the country? As Waldman notes, "Republicans know that if they were forthright about their agenda and their nominee, the American people would recoil in disgust."
Though many Republican senators had been reticent about expressing their glee over an anti-abortion Supreme Court appointment in recent weeks, some of that seems to have melted away this afternoon.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC):
Roe v. Wade and abortion: If I wanted to work for Ronald Reagan, one of the things I would tell the Reagan administration is I think Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. They are likely to hire me because they were trying to prove to the court that the court took away from elected officials a very important right, protecting the unborn. ... I don't think any American should lose the right to challenge any precedent that the Supreme Court has issued because the judge wanted to get on the court.
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS):
[Y]ou can claim whatever you want to of being pro-life or pro- choice, but the right to a abortion is not in the Constitution. The court created it. It created a constitutional right. And these decisions removed a fully appropriate political judgment from the people of the several states and has led to many adverse consequences. ... Roe has made it not only possible, but has found it constitutional to kill a whole class of people, simply because of their genetic make-up. This is the effect of Roe. I think this is a proper issue for us to consider...
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK):
[T]he fact is that you can't claim, in this Senate hearing, to care for those that are underprivileged, to those that are at risk, to those that are vulnerable, to those that are weak, to those that suffer and, at the same time, say I don't care about those who have been ripped from the wombs of women and the complications that have come about throughout that. So, the debate, for the American public -- and the real debate here is about Roe. We're going to go off in all sorts of directions, but the decisions that are going to be made on votes on the committee and the votes on the floor is going to be about Roe, whether or not we as a society have decided that this is an ethical process, that we have this convenient process that if we want to rationalize one moral choice with another, we just do it through abortion, this taking of the life, of life of an unborn child.
You heard him. That's what the debate is about.