Saturday 10 April 2010

Even Stevens

When the judge in question is as old as John Paul Stevens, then his liberalism and his having been nominated by a Republican President are in no sense incongruous. In those days a liberal or a conservative judge could as easily have been nominated by a President of either party.

And the Obama Coalition rather suggests that, depending as ever on how the terms are defined, at least on the Democratic side those days may have returned. The passing over of Douglas Kmiec for Ambassador to the Holy See means that that conservative Catholic constitutional scholar and Obama supporter is available for nomination to the Supreme Court.

Nothing could better encapsulate the tragic reduction of the Republican Party to a rump of yahoos who screech that they are "Taxed Enough Already" without having to pay for universal healthcare but who are right behind the catastrophically expensive aging of never-ending global war, who holler that universal healthcare is "unconstitutional" but who fully support the likes of the Patriot Act, who see themselves as the voice of conservative Middle America but have nothing to say about anything pro-life or pro-family, who laud Joe Wilson's heckle but joined with him in supporting John McCain and Lindsey Grahamnesty, and who know absolutely nothing about the history of their own party even as recently as the 1990s.

Nor could anything better mark the purging of the PUMAs, and the restoration of the coalition that is the true Democratic Party.

The only problem in the grumble that there is now no Protestant on the Supreme Court. So - perhaps somewhere in what are often still the culturally conservative congregations of American Episcopalianism, Methodism, Lutheranism or Calvinism, none of them short of lawyers - where is the Protestant Kmiec? Or is this the Evangelicals' big breakthrough? If so, then it will be thanks to Obama.

6 comments:

  1. He is now Ambassador to Malta.

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  2. Yes, but plenty of other people could be.

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  3. Stupak is a lawyer.

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  4. Now, there is a thought indeed. But the buzz seems to be that it needs to be a Protestant.

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  5. http://www.olddog.name/?p=146

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  6. White Catholics decide Presidential elections.

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