Another Big, Fat "I Told You So"
Two months ago I made the following prediction:
GOPers refrained from pulling the trigger on passing over [Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter] out of unfounded fears that he would lead a RINO stampede across the aisle, wiping out the gains made in the election....Yet they've now handed the Judiciary Chair over to a man who is an ideological foe, an iconoclastic grandstander, and whose word has repeatedly proven to mean nothing. And it's not going to be long in coming back to bite them in the ass.
Now read this:
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter went back on his word to Republican caucus members and conservative groups alike when he recently hired Hannibal G. Williams II Kemerer, who until recently was the NAACP's assistant general counsel. Specter hired Kemerer against the wishes of his senior Judiciary Committee staff. "We warned him this was going to cause trouble, but Specter said it was his committee, we are his staff, and he's going to do what he believes is right," says a Judiciary Committee staffer.
Kemerer was a protégé of Elaine Jones, who three years ago, as head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, lobbied Senator Ted Kennedy to delay confirmation of many of President Bush's judicial nominees to a federal circuit court where her group had pending litigation....
Specter hired Kemerer to deal specifically with the nominations and vetting of federal judicial nominees, a position many conservatives were led to believe by Specter would go, at the very least, to a Republican, and most likely to a conservative. Specter, according to a longtime conservative judicial observer, made those promises during a meeting in late 2004 at which Specter was pleading for an opportunity to serve as Judiciary Chairman.
When word of Kemerer's hiring spread within the NAACP and Democratic Senate ranks, virtual whoops of glee were being emailed about.
As word earlier this week began to leak of Kemerer's employment, Specter slid his new hire into a staff position on the committee dealing with civil litigation issues and tort reform. And according to the Judiciary source, word is that all remarks made to the press are to make clear that Kemerer will not be working on judicial nominations.
But Specter, according to some close advisers, has told them as well as Kemerer that Kemerer will play a "critical" role on the Judiciary Committee."What everybody seems to be forgetting is that this guy is going to have access to all of our files, to all of our briefings. He will have access to everything because he is on the majority staff. If he were a Democratic hire, it might be another matter," says the Judiciary staffer. "But theoretically he is one of us."
Specter has further inflamed both the White House and Republican leadership in the Senate by his request that all judicial nominees - even those who previously were cleared by the Judiciary Committee - go through committee hearings. This would mean that someone like filibustered Texas supreme court justice Priscilla Owen would have to face full committee once again. "That hasn't gotten out too far, as far as I know," says the committee staffer. "But conservative legal groups are livid."
In the punchline of my 11/20/04 post, I concluded:
"Until Republicans realize that today's political battles were decided yesterday, and that tomorrow's will be decided today, they will continue to lose in advance and to repent in retrospect," O'Sullivan concluded. To that counsel now has to be added the realization that any political battle - to say nothing of the next election battle in 2006 - is lost before it begins when you put a turncoat in command.
The prosecution rests.
For now.
GOPers refrained from pulling the trigger on passing over [Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter] out of unfounded fears that he would lead a RINO stampede across the aisle, wiping out the gains made in the election....Yet they've now handed the Judiciary Chair over to a man who is an ideological foe, an iconoclastic grandstander, and whose word has repeatedly proven to mean nothing. And it's not going to be long in coming back to bite them in the ass.
Now read this:
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter went back on his word to Republican caucus members and conservative groups alike when he recently hired Hannibal G. Williams II Kemerer, who until recently was the NAACP's assistant general counsel. Specter hired Kemerer against the wishes of his senior Judiciary Committee staff. "We warned him this was going to cause trouble, but Specter said it was his committee, we are his staff, and he's going to do what he believes is right," says a Judiciary Committee staffer.
Kemerer was a protégé of Elaine Jones, who three years ago, as head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, lobbied Senator Ted Kennedy to delay confirmation of many of President Bush's judicial nominees to a federal circuit court where her group had pending litigation....
Specter hired Kemerer to deal specifically with the nominations and vetting of federal judicial nominees, a position many conservatives were led to believe by Specter would go, at the very least, to a Republican, and most likely to a conservative. Specter, according to a longtime conservative judicial observer, made those promises during a meeting in late 2004 at which Specter was pleading for an opportunity to serve as Judiciary Chairman.
When word of Kemerer's hiring spread within the NAACP and Democratic Senate ranks, virtual whoops of glee were being emailed about.
As word earlier this week began to leak of Kemerer's employment, Specter slid his new hire into a staff position on the committee dealing with civil litigation issues and tort reform. And according to the Judiciary source, word is that all remarks made to the press are to make clear that Kemerer will not be working on judicial nominations.
But Specter, according to some close advisers, has told them as well as Kemerer that Kemerer will play a "critical" role on the Judiciary Committee."What everybody seems to be forgetting is that this guy is going to have access to all of our files, to all of our briefings. He will have access to everything because he is on the majority staff. If he were a Democratic hire, it might be another matter," says the Judiciary staffer. "But theoretically he is one of us."
Specter has further inflamed both the White House and Republican leadership in the Senate by his request that all judicial nominees - even those who previously were cleared by the Judiciary Committee - go through committee hearings. This would mean that someone like filibustered Texas supreme court justice Priscilla Owen would have to face full committee once again. "That hasn't gotten out too far, as far as I know," says the committee staffer. "But conservative legal groups are livid."
In the punchline of my 11/20/04 post, I concluded:
"Until Republicans realize that today's political battles were decided yesterday, and that tomorrow's will be decided today, they will continue to lose in advance and to repent in retrospect," O'Sullivan concluded. To that counsel now has to be added the realization that any political battle - to say nothing of the next election battle in 2006 - is lost before it begins when you put a turncoat in command.
The prosecution rests.
For now.
posted by JASmius at 2:41 PM
<<< Home