What matters in politics is getting as much of what you want as possible, while not getting as much as possible of what you didn't want. Over at Skymusings: Misunderstimation and the bigger picture there's a rather interesting premise built up - that Bush knows what he's doing, and that both Conservatives and Liberals are playing right into his hands with their usual hysterics.
The President knows fully that had he nominated Luttig or one of the other Scalia types that we have hungered for, it would have triggered war with the Dems (not necessarily bad in and of itself). The problem is that this war would likely be lost due to the defection of his own RINOs, and the guarantee of Dem solidarity. Why fight the war you can't win? It makes infinitely more sense in these circumstances to slip in a Stealth nominee that will fool the Dems into thinking she's another O'Connor. If the President is convinced she will in fact be a solid conservative originalist, then he will have achieved true diplomacy in that he made the Dems think they won while he got exactly what he wanted. From his gubernatorial contests on down through his presidential contests he has consistently been the Dummy That Outsmarted The Smarties. He is a risk-taker, and he knows his opponents better than they know themselves.Well, that wouldn't be anything unusual these days.I agree that in most cases it would be best to take the fight to them, to put in someone we know we will all stand behind, and be someone steeped in judicial knowledge, experience, and scholarship. The problem is that this person will never get confirmed in the current political arena -- Remember Judge Bork?
My clarion call is for conservatives to stop for a moment, consider the things I have said here, and to remember that politics does not happen in a vacuum. There is ALWAYS a bigger picture, and most have missed it.
I think Skymuse is more on target here than some would think. Bush is looking to stack the Supreme court with folks who won't 'interpret' stuff into the Constitution that isn't there. If the person he nominates isn't a hard-core conservative firebreather, who actually donated to (gasp) Democratic campaigns before... who has a whole host of things that would make Republican hard-liners froth wildly... yet still would avoid legislating from the bench...
And she gets confirmed... how does he lose?
J.