I'm amazed at all the preparation and money and thought and blood and sweat and tears that went into prepared for a Supreme Court nomination, and that this is the best we can come up with so far:
A prominent abortion rights group launched a television ad yesterday that accuses Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. of siding with violent extremists and a convicted clinic bomber while serving in the solicitor general's office, an accusation that Roberts's supporters immediately condemned as a flagrant distortion.
The ad, sponsored by NARAL Pro-Choice America, focuses on Roberts's role in a case involving whether a 19th-century anti-Ku Klux Klan statute could be used to shut down blockades of health clinics by abortion protesters. The solicitor general's office filed a friend-of-the-court brief siding with the clinic protesters, including Operation Rescue. The high court ruled 6 to 3 against the health clinics in January 1993.
I'm of two minds about this. I'm one of the ones always complaining that the left is not shrill enough, that we don't fight dirty enough, and that republicans have a tactical advantage because they're so unscrupulous. But when our side runs an ad that says this,
"Supreme Court nominee John Roberts filed court briefs supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber," the ad states. The ad concludes by saying, "America can't afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans."
something that doesn't seem to be true, I get really pissed off. There's no evidence that Roberts excuses violence against other Americans, or that Roberts' brief (did he actually write it? it's not clear from the article) is his actual opinion.
This is rhetoric worthy of republicans. All you have to do is change some of the wording and you end up with the-left-wants-to-blame-America-first style rhetoric. It's pointless. It doesn't contribute to our political discourse. It doesn't tell you anything about John Roberts. And it certainly won't defeat his candidacy.
What it will do is provoke a round of the who-can-feign-outrage-more-convincingly game and ignore the real issues. With friends like these...
-- Michael
This is rhetoric worthy of republicans.
Precisely, and it's high time we stopped just taking it and started dishing it back out. Yes, it lowers the level of discourse, but frankly, I'm tired of being called a baby-killer just because I think the right to privacy is more important than their misguided opinion about when life begins.
Posted by: Incertus | August 09, 2005 at 03:20 PM
No, I'm with Michael on this. Every fighter knows that if you sucker-punch your opponent or go below the belt, you damn well better be sure that your first shot leaves him incapacitated. Because if you fight dirty but poorly, you're toast. If we collectively decided to bring Roberts down, we maybe could do it. It would take a well-coordinated barrage designed to destroy the man entirely. The French Fry case might be a good starting point, but NARAL's piece of crap is not. If we've decided not to try to sink Roberts because Bush would surely follow up with someone worse, then lets keep the debate on the up-and-up so that the Rethugs can't point to our sins to justify their far worse ones.
The problem is that you can't get NARAL to coordinate with whichever strategy the Democrats decide on (assuming they could decide). In some ways, that is the inevitable downside of the fact that unlike the Rethug army of dittoheads and astroturf front groups, we actually HAVE a grassroots base that can't simply be told what to do (witness NARAL's totally counterproductive endorsement of Chafee). Part of me wants us to fight like the Rethugs, but part of me admits that we can't because we are different, and the price of becoming like them must be weighed against the benefits.
On this specific example, though, it's a no-brainer. NARAL has acheived nothing except to give a weapon to the enemy. It's like a street fight I once saw in Peru-- a weakling pulled out a tire iron to try to intimidate his stronger antagonist. In seconds the other man had pulled the tire iron out of his hand. The weakling ran like he's never run in his life. Lets not be pulling out the metaphorical tire irons unless we are ready and willing to use them, and use them with deadly force.
Posted by: the exile | August 10, 2005 at 09:22 PM