July 20, 2005
By Liz Halloran, Dan Gilgoff, and Terence Samuel
U.S. News & World Report
After more than two weeks of anxiety over whom President Bush would choose as his first nominee to the Supreme Court, conservatives from the business community to the religious right expressed relief and deep satisfaction with the choice: D.C. Circuit Court Judge John Roberts, 50, who would replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
"Stellar. One of the best. Everyone in the Republican base will unite around him," said Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network. "There is great happiness with him."
And in a blur of late-night conference calls and E-mails last night after the president introduced Roberts on national television, activists from the right honed a strategy of restraint, purposefully allowing the vocal left to step up its attacks while conservatives kept their powder dry.
Though not in full-attack mode, liberal groups also had a united message: disappointment that the president had turned not to a moderate in the mode of O'Connor but to a conservative fully supported by the religious right and with a record of advocating overturning Roe v. Wade, unfriendliness to environmental law, and an unknown position on the separation of church and state. Ralph Neas of People for the American Way called Roberts's nomination a "watershed" and characterized the veteran litigator as "Justice Antonin Scalia in sheep's clothing."
At NARAL Pro-Choice America, Nancy Keenan pronounced Roberts "unsuitable for the Supreme Court" and sent out talking points to the organization's 30,000 "rapid responders" that described the nominee as "a right-wing activist who would overturn Roe." MoveOn.org's Ben Brandzel said the group would dispatch 1,000 teams to gather petitions opposing Robert.
But conservatives stayed largely mum, said Manuel Miranda, chairman of the Third Branch Conference, because heaping praise on Roberts could provide easy targets for liberal groups. Said Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation: "Let the strident women's groups come out and do their number. They will split the Democratic Party down the middle."
Not all Democrats and liberal groups, however, were playing to the conservative strategy. On Capitol Hill, Democrats did not come out with guns blazing, though they pledged thorough and tough hearings.
Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said Roberts has "outstanding legal credentials and an appropriate legal temperament and demeanor." Schumer is a member of the Judiciary Committee, which will hold hearings in September on the nominee; he voted against Roberts in committee when the judge was nominated to the appeals court in 2003.
Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, said he did not expect any questions about Roberts's qualifications, integrity, or sense of fairness. But no one, he said, gets a free pass to the Supreme Court. Said Schumer: "With some nominees you might have said, 'Well, there's a darn good shot that's going to be a consensus nominee.' With others, you'd say, 'There's a darn good shot it's not going to be a consensus nominee.' He's in the middle."
Miranda and other conservatives said Tuesday night's announcement came as a relief, after a full-tilt Washington rumor mill produced speculation that Fifth Circuit Court Judge Edith Brown Clement, a less established conservative, was the president's choice.
"With Clement, he would have been seen to be avoiding a fight," said Miranda. "The idea of avoiding a fight, that would have been incomprehensible."
Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said that in a call received from the White House shortly before the announcement, he was given an indication that Roberts "would have respect for precedent but that precedent would not have the same weight as the Constitution itself," perhaps signaling the nominee's stance on Roe. Conservatives also noted that Roberts's wife has been involved in the antiabortion group Feminists for Life.
No one on the liberal side is advocating a Senate filibuster of Roberts's nomination, but they are looking for answers at the Senate hearings, said Mark D. Agrast of the Center for American Progress.
"There's a lot we need to learn about Judge Roberts," Agrast said. "He's had a brief tenure on the bench, and most of his career has been spent representing private clients."
It seems many Democrats are on the fence, which is where the White House wanted them.
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