Pursuing Holiness

Michelle Malkin has the text of a recent McCain speech on judges.

I have three words for “my friend” Mr. McCain. Gang. Of. Fourteen. One of the main reasons conservatives worked their backsides off voting in a majority was to finally, finally push through the judges that liberals have been blocking for years. And McCain and six of his RINO compadres made our work and donations meaningless.

Let’s recall where we were at that time - many of those Senators were facing re-election. The pressure on them to give an up or down vote was huge. The pressure on them to vote yes for conservative judges was huge. It was a campaign issue for more than one GOP Senator. And McCain helped allow them to avoid accountability by voting yes or no on the President’s nominees.

One of the major points of demanding that judicial nominees get an up-or-down vote, however, was to impose political accountability: to make the McCains, DeWines, Grahams and the rest go on record. …

The Gang of 14 deal was, for all intents and purposes, the deal that then-Minority Leader Harry Reid offered Frist the previous week. The Majority Leader turned Reid down flat. He opted to press ahead — something it would have been exceedingly strange to do if he secretly approved of the deal’s terms, as the Whites suggest. Frist obviously did that because he perceived, given the pressure from conservatives, that if compelled to be publicly accountable, many of the potential GOP defectors would vote in favor of ending filibusters despite their misgivings.

Forcing our political representatives to tell us where they stand is a fundamental democratic principle. Even losing a “nuclear option” vote would have been valuable for conservatives: It would have identified which Senators believed — like Sen. McCain obviously believes — that preserving senatorial privilege took precedence over their constitutional duty to consent to, or withhold consent from, judicial nominees.

Besides preserving their privilege (which allows a single senator, for absolutely no reason, to prevent a president from fulfilling his constitutional obligation to appoint officers of the United States, without whom the government cannot function), McCain and his confederates were most determined to avoid accountability. That was the essence of the Gang of 14 deal. The senators pretended, in a bluster of high-minded twaddle, to resolve the controversy without disturbing the chamber’s procedures. It was nonsense.

So the argument that we need to elect him President in order to get the judges we want rings pretty hollow, since he proved beyond any doubt that it’s the Senate, not the President, who decides who sits on our courts. It’s all just more double talk from the Straight Talk Express.

Added: Allahpundit writes -

If we expect to end judicial activism, then we have to have a President willing to nominate justices in the mold of Roberts and Alito. We can’t even get Obama and Clinton to follow the majority of their Democratic colleagues to confirm such choices, let alone appoint them. I know who I don’t trust appointing jurists to the federal bench.

No, I don’t trust Obama or Clinton to nominate anybody decent. They’d pack every court with Ruth Bader Ginsberg clones, given the opportunity. But I don’t trust McCain to nominate anyone who will offend “his friends” on the left. And the difference is, the GOP Senators will dig their heels in against raging liberal Democratic nominees; what are the odds they’ll dig their heels in against people McCain puts up? Rather than play the game that McCain permitted to continue with his Gang membership, they’ll give his nominees an up or down vote. And they’ll pass.

Added - BipolarNation considers McCain’s judicial reliability.

written by Laura