Right-Wing Interest Groups Driven By Financial Motives In Attacking Obama’s Court Pick
Right-Wing Interest Groups Driven By Financial Motives In Attacking Obama’s Court Pick
Editor’s Note: Ian Millhiser is joining ThinkProgress to blog on issues relating to the Supreme Court nomination (read his bio here). This is his first post.
When Justice David Souter announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, President Obama saw an opportunity to appoint an outstanding jurist who will shape the Court for a generation. But right-wing interest groups saw dollar signs:
[W]ord that Justice David H. Souter plans to retire at the end of this session sent a jolt through the right-wing fundraising circuit late Thursday night.
“This is a nuclear weapon for the conservatives out there,” said Dan Morgan, a veteran conservative fundraiser who founded Morgan, Meredith and Associates. “When you do fundraising, there’s an emotional component in this and boy the emotion is there magnified times 100.”
So it should come as no surprise that these interest groups were already demanding that conservative senators obstruct the President’s choice before he announced his selection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. One right-wing group had been running web-ads against three of the front-runners for the nomination. Another was threatening to run ads targeting GOP senators who fail to obstruct the President’s nominee.
Speaking to Politico, Gary Bauer of the anti-choice, anti-gay group American Values urged Senate Republicans to follow their House counterparts’ “Party of No” strategy:
“Republicans in the House have gone a long way [toward satisfying conservatives] with votes on the stimulus. … But when it comes to the Senate, there are still a lot of people not convinced that … what people expect is for them to carry the banner of our philosophy as boldly and with as much confidence as the other side does.”
“The other side does not agonize about whether they are going to give a Republican Supreme Court nominee a difficult time, they just do it.”
But it is not entirely clear that senators are buying what the conservative base is selling. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, recently announced that he would not filibuster a judicial nominee except in “extraordinary circumstances”— the same standard which prevented Democrats from filibustering a George W. Bush nominee who believes that minimum wage, maximum hour, and child labor laws are unconstitutional. Former Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (R-UT) expressed similar sentiments, telling The Hill that “Republicans have never filibustered a Supreme Court nominee, and I don’t think we’re going to start now.”
In 1998, Hatch voted for Sotomayor’s confirmation to the 2nd Circuit. We’ll see then whether Hatch keeps his promise to avoid obstructionism, or whether conservative senators cave to right-wing interest groups’ hunger for a fundraising bonanza.
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Attention Democratic Senators:
If the Rethugs threaten to filibuster, USE THE NUCLEAR OPTION!
After all, it was THEIR idea a few years back.
What’s good for the goose is sauce for the gander when the tables have been turned.
May 26th, 2009 at 10:29 amYeah, yeah, while repugs once may have sounded reasonable, we must remember that was then, this is now.
May 26th, 2009 at 10:31 amMoney ralks to big egos.
They won’t need the nuclear option, Ho, the Rethugs fight this nomination at their own peril.
May 26th, 2009 at 10:39 amMoney? Funds? Republicans? Whining? Crying? Losers?
Let ‘em filibuster. Please. MAKE them filibuster. Please!
It will go very well for the Republicans. Oh, yeah, right, like everything else has gone so well for them this year so far…
ha ha
May 26th, 2009 at 10:39 amNo, no, no, Uncle Ho…
I want Republicans trying to filibuster on the floor of the Senate over this very weak issue for them.
I want Jim Inhofe waxing poetic on the lies of the enviro-terrorists trying to put restraints on our rights to drive Hummers and Expeditions forever.
I want Kit Bond explaining over and over, overnight, how torture is going to protect us.
It’s a win-win, if they filibuster. I promise you.
May 26th, 2009 at 10:41 am“It’s money that matters
May 26th, 2009 at 10:45 amIn the U.S.A.”
-Randy Newman
I don’t expect the conservatives to complain much or filibuster because they’ve seen her before in the Judiciary Committee hearings. My concern is her rulings are not going to go far enough in stopping large corporate interests from continuing to exercise far to much control over the agencies inside our gov’t who are chartered to oversee their constant abuses. Judges need to rule for everyone not just the monied interests who have plundered our treasury legally for 30 years.
May 26th, 2009 at 10:46 amRight wingnuts simply can’t get it that they lost, that the nation doesn’t want their garbage and fear mongering any more, that they’ve got to put up with what all of us had to when they were in power, and that they just need to shut up & deal with it or emigrate.
May 26th, 2009 at 10:50 amHmmmm, boring again? Much, much?
May 26th, 2009 at 10:53 amJudge Sotomayor’s imminent nomination to the High Court is going to be a scatological Blue Man Group/Gallagher show, so get your ponchos on, people.
May 26th, 2009 at 10:56 amWhatever happened to an “up or down vote”? LOL
May 26th, 2009 at 10:57 amSo, money motivates the GOP. What a surprise.
May 26th, 2009 at 10:58 am“Right-Wing Interest Groups Driven By Financial Motives In …”
ANYTHING & EVERYTHING.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:00 amWaltB Says: Right wingnuts simply can’t get it that they lost,
I was just thinking that they have been totally unappreciative to the fact that President Obama is including them despite the fact that he really doesn’t have to. No wonder they are so against ‘empathy’, they really have become the party of Sociopathy.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:00 amThat the Republicans consider themselves the “Party of No” is appropriate. No brains, no guts, no sensitivity, and no chance in November. God love ‘em, what a wonderful group of old, worn out, white boys.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:01 amConservativeForProgress Says: It is amazing how hypocritical some Democrats
Be specific.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:11 amWho said fillibustering was un-Constitutional CFP? How do YOU feel about allowing an up or down vote CFP? Nuclear option? Thes are the two options that the GOP offered when they held a vote on SCOTUS nominees. What I hear on this thread is that the Repubs SHOULD be made to actually fillibuster if they go so far as to threaten to. Let them have their Constitutional authority to fillibuster and LET them rant on and on as long as they want. THEN VOTE!
May 26th, 2009 at 11:14 amDo the Republicans not have the ability to comprehend the latest Gallup poll that shows how the Republican Party has declined in EVERY demographic except religious fanatics? This is just one of many reasons why…
May 26th, 2009 at 11:15 amDo the Republicans not have the ability to comprehend the latest Gallup poll that shows how the Republican Party has declined in EVERY demographic except religious fanatics? This is just one of many reasons why…
Like a fish, hopelessly entangled in a fishing line, evermore strangled by each and every move.
Fascinating chapter in US political history IMO.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:26 amElections have consequences…fair up or down vote ring any bells?
May 26th, 2009 at 11:48 amthe repubs and rightwingers are going to dig their hole deeper and deeper on this.
http://blahgblog.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/what-are-they-thinking/
May 26th, 2009 at 11:58 amSorry, OS, but you are the one who lost. See post 24 for further details.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:59 amConservativeForProgress Says:
It is amazing how hypocritical some Democrats have been over this when they argued in favor of fillibustering Republican POTUS nominees to SCOTUS…
Nothing hypocritical about it at all, considering that many of the people Republicans nominated totally suck. Unqualified extremists across the board.
See the thing you’re not taking into account here is that we’re right and you’re wrong. Pretty much about everything. So there’s a difference when you claim the other side is wrong about something and when we do it. Our claims actually are coherent with the factual state of affairs in reality, whereas yours are nothing more than specious fantasies.
May 26th, 2009 at 12:02 pmAnd this surprises anyone?
May 26th, 2009 at 12:22 pmWelcome to TP, Ian!
May 26th, 2009 at 12:28 pmRe Hatch & Sessions saying they might not filibuster: People lie.
If they want to filibuster, make them stand on the Senate floor for days on end talking the talk.
May 26th, 2009 at 12:32 pmAgain C4P you seem to think that Liz Cheney has an excellent record of public service. Any and all credibility you might have had is gone. Why are you even still bothering?
I see OS is back to his overused “much” phrases. So much for him widening his vocabulary.
May 26th, 2009 at 12:50 pmDon’t you just love people like Rove nd Limbaugh calling a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton and editor of the Yale Law Journal ‘dumb?’ Two people who couldn’t make it through undergraduate school? Who know no more about the law than I? I’m a retired Postal Service Worker and I know the last/this court majority was biased against minorities and women. The legislature had to pass a law to overturn their decision on equal pay for women and when they could file discrimination. You would be hard pressed to find a case where they ruled against a corporation. It seems Scalia, Thomas, his lap dog, Roberts and Alito are corporate and Republican owned.
May 26th, 2009 at 2:03 pmFormer Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (R-UT) ………telling The Hill that “Republicans have never filibustered a Supreme Court nominee, and I don’t think we’re going to start now.”
Republicans have NEVER filibustered a SCOTUS nominee??
What a liar!!! They conveniently forget Abe Fortas in 1968.
http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Filibuster_Derails_Supreme_Court_Appointment.htm
May 27th, 2009 at 2:16 amThanks for playing, but, you lost.
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