Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Obstructionism Means You Don't Have To Make Sense

When the Bush administration had the opportunity to select Supreme Court Justices, they didn't feel the need to find centrist candidates that would be acceptable to progressives. We got Alito and Roberts, both hard line conservatives. The Democrats put up a token resistance, but they were nominated and appointed in the end.

On the other hand the Obama Administration has its second opportunity to challenge the conservative bent of Supreme Justice, Antonin Scalia's conservative court. Neither Sotomayer or the present candidate, Solicitor General, Elena Kagan are very liberal. 
This fits the pattern of the last 25 years. The Republicans pick the most conservative when they have the chance and the Democrats seem to be bent on appeasement with candidates who disappoint their liberal base. Believe me, I think Obama is a step in the right direction, but he is nowhere near the characature of liberal. progressive, socialist radical the conservative obstructionists caterwall about...if he was, perhaps I'd be a much happier man.

Of course, the Obstructionist Conservatives are going to attempt block anyone the Obama administration offers, just in the general principle of their chosen path to derail and deligitimatize this administration. They don't feel the need or think they have to make sense. They are not governing, they are engaged in a "cunning plan" to resieze power.

I was beginning to wonder what had happened to Michael Steele in all of this. He seems to have laid low ever since the LA Bondage Bar Expense account debacle.
But he was back yesterday defending the criticism of Kagen for her support of Justice Thurgood Marshalls criticism of the Constitution for its support of slavery. Was Steele forced to parrot a party line of talking points handed to him?
Can he really disagree with Marshalls statement?

"I cannot accept this invitation, for I do not believe the meaning of the Constitution was forever "fixed" at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite "The Constitution,” they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago.
For a sense of the evolving nature of the Constitution we need look no further than the first three words of the document's preamble: “We the People.” When the Founding Fathers used this phrase in 1787, they did not have in mind the majority of America's citizens. "We the People" included, in the words of the Framers, "the whole Number of free Persons." On a matter so basic as the right to vote, for example, Negro slaves were excluded, although they were counted for representational purposes at three-fifths each. Women did not gain the right to vote for over 130 years. These omissions were intentional."
 What part of this statement does Michael Steele reject? And if he is, indeed, a self-demeaning fool who believes that the originally drafted Constitution was not defective, why doesn't he seek membership in the Ku Klux Klan?

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