“You have said this many times. But you have never explained what has driven you to that conclusion.”

I can’t speak for Patterico of course but I suspect the obvious disaster of the Bush Presidency has something to do with it. Personally I find this disaster far more depressing than the prospect of a status quo Supreme Court.

You don’t think Clinton’s campaign combined with the media will be able to get people to feel comfortable with her in charge of national security? Remember she doesn’t have to beat Giuliani on the issue, just get a draw. Then her alleged superiority on domestic issues, again according to her campaign spin and the media, will get the mushy middle to vote for her, especially single women. What domestic issue does Giuliani even have? Some Christian conservative leaders have already said they won’t vote for him.

The Supreme Court is about to become superfluous anyway. When the President sends his White House counsel and chief of staff to get a signature for an illegal policy from a disabled non-acting Attorney General, fails, and goes on with the illegal program anyway… How can we even pretend that there is any pretense of abiding by a rule of law?

McCain said, the first time he was running for president, that he opposed overturning Roe v. Wade, now or ever. We have no reason to believe his professed conversion since then, especially since he’s spent most of his political career spitting in the faces of conservatives. And a Justice who would uphold Roe is most unlikely to be solid on the other issues. (Lest I be accused of advocating that we turn Supreme Court appointments into single-issue discussions.) In any event, there’s no way that McCain would ever nominate Justices who would strike down his single accomplishment: campaign-finance reform–or, as George Will has quite appropriately called it, government rationing the free speech of everyone except the media.

Giuliani has been at pains to say that a strict constructionist might well vote to uphold Roe v. Wade. (Of course, we don’t really want strict constructionists, we want reasonable constructionists like Augustus Scalius or Thomas Magnus, but that is neither here nor there.) We have no basis for believing that Giuliani would appoint the kind of Justice we want. Especially after he said (in April) that there’s a constitutional right to have an abortion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZe1j4csMq8 And I don’t like the idea of Supreme Court Justices being selected by someone who thinks (as Giuliani does) that if you have a constitutional right to X, then the government should pay for you to have X. That sounds like something Ted Kennedy would think.

I have regarded it as a foregone conclusion for some time now that a Democrat will win the 2008 presidential election…

Why?

You have said this many times. But you have never explained what has driven you to that conclusion.

And if you really think that, will you still vote? Will you still urge, through PP, others to vote?

There is a terrible danger in fatalism; just ask the free and independent nation of Tibet.

Dafydd

We’d pwn…

Thompson will win, never fear. (Fred that is)