David Broder Sees Partisanship

by digby

The Dean observes the Sotomayor hearings and finds that the Democrats and the Republicans are arguing over Supreme Court nominations because they are partisans:

By making the best of their meager case against Sotomayor, the Republicans signaled to Obama that they are ready to fight harder if he names to the bench other liberals less armored by their personal histories. But the Democrats are clearly ready for that fight, fueled by their resentment of the two Bush appointees who have already moved the Supreme Court in a markedly more conservative direction. Chief Justice Roberts won 22 Democratic confirmation votes, not only with his obvious legal credentials but his bland assurances that he saw the job of a justice as akin to that of a baseball umpire — enforcing the rules, not rewriting the rulebook. One after another, Judiciary Committee Democrats told the Republicans: You fooled us once, but never again. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, for one, pointed to the long list of significant decisions on which Roberts and Alito have led or joined a 5-4 majority, overruling precedent and narrowing individual rights. “I do not believe that Supreme Court justices are merely umpires calling balls and strikes,” Feinstein said. “I believe that they make the decisions of individuals who bring to the court their own experiences and philosophies” — the very thing that Republicans say they worry about in Sotomayor’s speeches. Strip away all the rhetoric, and what you have left is a certainty that partisanship and deeply felt battles will continue to rage every time there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court.

Broder failed to notice, naturally, that the silly Charlie Browns in the Democratic party are the ones who held hands and sang bipartisan kumbaaya while the Republicans now laugh in their faces when the shoe is on the other foot. Roberts and Alito turned out to be hard core ideologues, which anyone with a pulse should have known. But Broder seems reluctant to acknowledge that fact, instead casting the two parties as hypocritical partisans.

Luckily for the Dean, the “partisanship” on display this week is all a kabuki show with no substance. Sotomayor will be confirmed. And who knows what kind of justice she will be? It’s always a crap shoot. But the one thing we do know is that barring an untimely retirement, we will be living with a defacto 5-4 conservative liberal split for probably the next generation thanks to the Rhenquist Court installing their favorite son in 2000 and the press helping make the country believe he was actually competent long enough to get re-elected. The Democrats lost that battle some time back.

This court is as right wing as we’ve ever known and it’s not going to get markedly better even if Sotomayor turns out to be William O Douglas in a dress. And everybody knows it. Because of that, we need more unabashedly liberal partisanship from the legislative branch, not less, just to ensure that our vaunted system of checks and balances isn’t completely trumped by a five man wrecking crew on the Supreme Court.

Broder needs to re-evaluate his premises from an institutional standpoint and realize that because we have a far right, corporate whore Supreme Court, we either need a truly liberal president or a liberal majority legislature to balance things out. When one branch is packed with ideological zealots with lifetime tenure, partisanship is necessary in order to have bipartisan governance.

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