Yeah, THAT'll Sway Red-State Voters

I'm telling you, as hopelessly hapless as elected Republicans are, the Democrats are still making it damn near impossible for them to fumble away this Supreme Court opening:

Leading Senate Judiciary Democrat Charles Schumer said Sunday that he intends to make gay marriage an issue in the upcoming confirmation battle over President Bush's pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

"All questions are legitimate," Schumer told ABC's This Week. "What is your view on Roe v. Wade? What is your view on gay marriage?"

"They are going to try to get away with the idea that we're not going to know their views," Schumer complained. "But that's not going to work." [emphasis added]

By which he means, "When the President's nominee refuses to answer those clearly out-of-bounds questions, that'll be our filibuster hook." As no less an authority than Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) writes today, neither of Bill Clinton's SCOTUS picks (Justices Ginsberg and Breyer) were confronted with any such pre-emptive litmus testing:

Once President Bush announces his nominee, a campaign of character assassination could quickly ensue. In addition, many Senate observers expect that the President's opponents will insist on violating Senate tradition and judicial ethics requirements, by demanding that the nominee satisfy a variety of litmus tests and explain how he or she would rule in a variety of hypothetical cases.

Yet it was not long ago that senators agreed that litmus tests and forced promises to politicians present serious dangers to judicial independence and the rule of law. The Senate overwhelmingly confirmed President Clinton’s nominees to the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, after they repeatedly upheld judicial tradition and ethics by refusing to answer questions about how they would rule in specific cases. Indeed, as Justice Ginsburg herself noted just a few years ago, “in accord with a longstanding norm, every Member of this Court declined to furnish such information to theSenate . . . . [T]he line each of us drew in response to preconfirmation questioning . . . is crucial to the health of the Federal Judiciary. . . . When a nominee] promises to rule a certain way on an issue that may later reach the courts, the potential for due process violations is grave and manifest.”

Why is Chucky brazenly blowing Senate tradition and respect for judicial ethics requirements out the nearest airlock? Simply - he, like the rest of his party, is not concerned in the slightest about publicly conceding that he considers the SCOTUS a political instrument by which his party can maintain its rule over the country despite its decline from national electoral competitiveness.

This is, in other words, just another political campaign to the Donks, and they will conduct themselves accordingly.

Of course, this makes Schumer's elevation of sodomarriage to parity with his party's child sacrifice rite all the more astonishing for its stubborn political tin-earedness:

The [New York] Democrat's mention of same-sex marriage in the same breath as his party's primary litmus test issue, abortion, raised a few eyebrows.

"How does he suddenly have the chutzpah to ask that as a litmus question when he himself opposes it?" WABC Radio host Curtis Sliwa wondered Tuesday morning.

Schumer came out against gay marriage in 2004, after New Paltz, NY, Mayor Jason West performed nearly two dozen same-sex unions.

As a congressman in 1996, Schumer voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which authorizes states not to recognize same-sex unions from other jurisdictions.

There were eleven pro-marriage ballot measures around the country in last November's election - every last one of them passed by margins ranging from comfortable to crushing, in red states and blue states alike. It is arguable that the galloping judicial overreach that flared up the sodomarriage issue in 2003 was decisive in costing the Dems their shot at denying George W. Bush a second term. While the center of public opinion has been drifting slowly but steadily rightward over the past decade (at least), on homomatrimony there is no drift because public opinion was and is vehemently opposed, particularly to having it, well, "deep-throated" on us by unelected robed overlords.

The public might, er, "swallow" civil union statutes here and there, but sodomarriage is a political non-starter, as Schumer's own actions of just a year ago amply illustrate.

And yet now he says that he and his colleagues are going to make it a cause celebre in the upcoming confirmation hearings, and part of the grounds for the inevitable filibuster to follow.

If you ever had any lingering doubts about who calls the shots in today's Democrat Party, this story alone should, um, "lay" them to rest.