Patterico's Pontifications

9/20/2005

Sen. Reid Opposes Roberts, Citing Uncertainty as to the Relative Sizes of Certain Portions of Roberts’s Anatomy

Filed under: Judiciary,Morons — Patterico @ 8:54 pm



Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid announced today that he will be voting against John Roberts. When pressed for specifics, Reid said that Judge Roberts’s performance at his confirmation hearings was at an eighth-grade level, and nowhere near the standard of Justice Scalia’s dissent in the Hillside Dairy case.

Kidding! I just enjoy reminding people of Reid’s claim that Justice Thomas’s dissent in the Hillside Dairy case was inferior to Justice’s Scalia’s. For some reason, that always makes me laugh. I think it’s because Justice Scalia wrote no dissent in that case.

No, Sen. Reid gave a very serious and weighty reason for his opposition. Reid paid careful attention to E.J. Dionne’s piece from Sunday, which argued that “the doubts about Roberts have nothing to do with his good heart.” Taking the hint, Reid stated of Roberts: “I’m not too sure if his heart is as big as his head.”

See? It’s not the goodness of the heart. It’s the size.

Who says size doesn’t matter?

Now, Sen. Reid’s excuse strikes me as a trifle manufactured, since (except in freakish cases) a man’s head is generally much larger than his heart. To my knowledge, every living and former Justice has possessed a head noticeably larger than his or her heart. Indeed, for a candidate actually to possess a heart larger than his head would be a circumstance so extraordinary, even I might support a filibuster.

If Senators were required to possess larger hearts than heads as a qualification for their positions, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) would be required to have a heart the size of a prize-winning pumpkin. But when did Harry Reid ever make that point? Huh?

I heard excerpts of Reid’s statement today, and I don’t want to mislead you: the relative sizes of Judge Roberts’s head and heart were not Reid’s only issues. He was also very upset that Roberts once used the phrase “illegal amigos.” Also, he noted, Judge Roberts once used the phrase “illegal amigos.” And finally: small heart.

None of this should be surprising. When I made my recent prediction that Committee Democrats would mostly vote for Roberts, I was giving them (except for Kennedy) credit for being, well, smart. It goes without saying that no such credit was ever extended to Reid, nor should it be.

What remains to be seen is whether the rest of the Democrats will follow Reid’s example. I still have my doubts. Even the L.A. Times endorsed Roberts, saying: “It will be a damning indictment of petty partisanship in Washington if an overwhelming majority of the Senate does not vote to confirm John G. Roberts Jr. to be the next chief justice of the United States.”

If Reid’s party goes this route, they will show themselves to be utterly without any credibility. And the President will be able to bring on Judge Michael Luttig without any serious repercussions. That will be a sweet day, because Luttig is a great judge — even if his dissent in the Hillside Dairy case didn’t quite match up to Scalia’s.

P.S. Put succinctly, Harry Reid is stuck on stupid.

5 Responses to “Sen. Reid Opposes Roberts, Citing Uncertainty as to the Relative Sizes of Certain Portions of Roberts’s Anatomy”

  1. Patterico, well said, as usual. I’m told that Roberts’s answers to written questions will be submitted to the Senate on Wednesday, by close of business. Notice that Reid couldn’t wait for Roberts to answer before making up his mind (such as it is). I’ve posted about this matter, with a link to this post of yours, at http://www.confirmthem.com/?p=1289 I recall Reid used to box; apparently the ratio of brain size to heart size is infinitessimal for some ex-boxers.

    P.S. I don’t know why my link to your post didn’t show up in your pingbacks or trackbacks or whatever, as it usually has done.

    Andrew (0aa559)

  2. Somebody on one of my favorite blogs suggested Reid was the “trophy date” offered to the left since the Democrats were so thoroghly inept at an attempt to derail his nomination.

    That makes sense to me. No need to stand on principle when you have none.

    Glenn (c644be)

  3. “Stuck on Stupid.” That’s that Elvis Costello song, right? Wait . . . naw, that’s “Less Than Zero.”

    CroolWurld (57d0a9)

  4. No need to stand on principle when you have none.

    Harry Reid didn’t have the fundamental honesty to identify himself as a Democrat in his last election. He was afraid that Nevada voters would reject him if he acknowledged his true party affiliation. He might actually have been right about that.

    Of course, the local newspapers went along and didn’t make a big deal of the obvious dishonesty. So, he’s safe for 6 years and up to lots of shady real estate scams in and around Los Vegas. Again, the Watchdogs of Democracy are not only looking the other way, they’re also feeding from the hand of scoundrels.

    Black Jack (ee9fe2)

  5. This is actually probably a politically smart move by Reid. As leader of the Senate Democrats, he pays ransom to the liberal interest groups by voting against Roberts. Ironically, this may give more leeway to other Dems to support Roberts. My prediction is that between 23 and 30 of the Senate Dems will vote against confirmation, so that they can go back to the liberal groups and say, “Hey, more than half of us voted no.” This should keep the money flowing to the DNC through the 2006 elections.

    The real interesting question will be how Hillary votes. My guess is that she will decide in the end to vote no, since she can only afford to go so far in her lurch to the middle. She will, however, issue some statement saying how much she personally admires John Roberts and how close she came to voting yes, but she will cite some minor detail in the proceedings as being decisive. If she is really slick, like a certain other Clinton, she might try something along the lines of “I would have supported him for Associate Justice, but I can’t support him as Chief Justice.”

    JVW (54c318)


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