Today brought a couple of must-read items about the choosing of a replacement for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. First among these is this a Gallup poll asking Americans how much the choice for the next Justice matters to them. Somewhat surprisingly, nearly half of all adults say it matters a “great deal,” which is far higher a number than I would have suspected—and certainly, I would argue, a far higher percentage than the actual percentage of people who will follow the developments with anything like a critical eye.
Fully half of both Democrats and Republicans said the nomination matters a great deal. 55 percent of self-described conservatives, and 56 percent of liberals, said the same. What’s troubling is that among independents, only 45 percent gave the “great deal” response, and only 40 percent of self-described moderates.
Moderates, listen up. This court, right now, is moderate. You may not think it matters, but if you like centrism you need to watch this thing very closely, since it will be a simple matter to dramatically shift the balance of this court following Justice O’Connor’s replacement. Unfortunately, we can’t count on anyone involved in this process, except perhaps the nominee him- or herself, to put ideology aside. It’s going to get ugly.
There’s more after the jump!
The other interesting point in this poll is that 65 percent of Americans said they would like to see a new Justice who would uphold Roe v. Wade, compared to only 29 percent would like to see it overturned. This will be extremely significant for the President, since he would be very likely to appoint a justice who might overturn Roe (litmus test or not, the type of judge Bush wants to appoint is generally the type of judge who would overturn Roe, Gonzalez excepted), but may be more keen on solidifying the conservative tilt in American politics. Overturning Roe would drive a wedge through the conservative polity and possibly stop the march of the Evangelicals in their tracks. That said, while I think stopping the EVs is good I’m not sure this particular means of doing so is the right way to go about it.
On to the next topic: a must-read entry on the Supreme Court Nomination Blog about how the media will be covering this process. I’d be curious to know whether this is referring to a variety of media outfits, or primarily (as I suspect) to cable television. Cable television really only seems to have three actual news outfits—missing persons, celebrities, and politics—so something that transcends those categories would of course be better covered by another news organization anyway, like the New York Times or some such (but not Time). Anyway, it’s still a must-read post; if nothing else it’s appropriate warning to find a rock to cower under until the storm blows over.
If I was a betting man, I’d have my money on Alberto Gonzalez for win, Priscilla Owen for place, and Edith Jones for show. But I don’t really know anything. Supreme Court nominations often come out of left field, as Justice O’Connor’s did. About half the current members of the Court took pundits by surprise when they were nominated. Conventional wisdom says Bush will very likely nominate a woman for this seat—replacing O’Connor with a male Justice would seem a tad misogynistic. But we know Bush really wants to nominate a Hispanic justice, and we know he’d really like that person to be Alberto Gonzalez. But Gonzalez is considered by the far right to be too centrist in his viewpoint (too much like O’Connor, in other words), and they see this nomination as a chance to move the Court to the right. This improves the odds on someone like Judge Jones. But, replacing Rehnquist with a more moderate person like Gonzalez would then return the court to status quo ante, so you have to wonder whether the righties have really thought this through. This could be why they’re bringing up folks like Mel Martinez and Raoul Cantero. We shall see.
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