Partisanship on Parade

Maybe it was the time change throwing me off, but it seemed like Chuck Schumer had begun his press conference to denounce Judge Alito before the President had finished his own announcement. I am honestly perplexed at how Schumer, Ted Kennedy, and Barbara Boxer can possibly believe that their rhetoric is not overheated. It seems that the Left (and, no doubt, the Right sometimes too) thinks that the hotter the rhetoric, the more likely they are to be believed. I imagine quite the opposite is true, or is at least coming to be true. The sky hasn't fallen. It's not likely to fall. Sure, we have some serious problems in this country (and globally) that we need to address, but the doomsayers of history generally end up being proven wrong, because right-minded people take action. This isn't to say that doomsayers have no place in the public discourse, because they do. The problem is when legitimate doomsaying cannot be distinguished from the boy who cried wolf. Schumer, for example, said that Alito is somebody who will divide the country, and that the President is being divisive by naming him to the court. Alito was confirmed 100-0 to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals; hardly seems divisive to me. Granted, Schumer wasn't in the Senate then, but Ted Kennedy was. How will Ted Kennedy answer for his vote in 1990? It seems hard to say that Alito is less qualified for the bench now than he was 15 years ago. Essentially Kennedy's position is untenable (not that such things have ever stopped him before) because at the foundation, his reasoning must be something like this: "Qualification for the bench is sufficient for confirmation when it is the Court of Appeals, but being qualified alone is not sufficient for confirmation to the Supreme Court." If the Supreme Court is to be truly independent, then it seems that qualifications are solely the factor in determining whether or not to confirm a nominee. I am not the first to remind people that Ginsburg and Breyer were both confirmed almost unanimously, in spite of their strong ideological differences with Republicans in the Senate at the time. Elections have consequences. I earnestly hope that Alito will be a measured jurist and not a Conservative activist. Activism of any flavor is antithetical to proper constitutional jurisprudence. However, undoing previous acts of activism does not itself constitute activism. I pray that Judge Alito, along with the rest of the court, can properly distinguish those two concepts.