Bush to announce SC nominee tonight at 8pm

[southsider2k5]

I signed up with the Bush campaign and both Texas Senators, have voted GOP in several races, donated to GOP candidates, and for some reason I cannot stay on their mailing lists.

 

I have never given a dime to any politician nor worked for any of their campaigns yet the Repubs have been sending me stuff for years. I have always voted for GOP Presidential canditates, but have split my ballot in most local races, go figure.

[Texsox]

I have never given a dime to any politician nor worked for any of their campaigns yet the Repubs have been sending me stuff for years.  I have always voted for GOP Presidential canditates, but have split my ballot in most local races, go figure.

 

Overall, and very unscientific, but the Dems seem to "do" the internet better. I was very disappointed when I submitted the same 5 questions to Kerry and Bush via their web sites and Bush never responded. Not that it made a difference in my vote. Being a Texas and all.

[Balta1701]

damn Bush for not meeting with Dems

You'll note that the names that are mentionned who came up in the meeting didn't end up being the nominee (I was hoping for Prado as the best we could get out of Bush).

 

How do you know that at the meeting the Dems didn't give like 3 or 4 guys they couldn't support and say that Roberts was on that list? I doubt it, since the guy seems chosen specifically to avoid a prolongued fight, but meeting with does not equal listening.

[Balta1701]

Overall, and very unscientific, but the Dems seem to "do" the internet better. I was very disappointed when I submitted the same 5 questions to Kerry and Bush via their web sites and Bush never responded. Not that it made a difference in my vote. Being a Texas and all. 

I'm not sure I'd agree that the Dems "do" the internet better.

 

Yeah, Dean was impressive in his ability to use the internet for fundraising, but after his campaign last year, it seemed like the only thing that Dems did using the internet was try to raise funds. Can you recall a single Kerry email that did anything other than try to raise funds? I can't.

 

There's so much more you can do in terms of spreading a message, keeping people on message, motivating grassroots, etc, that Kerry never did on his own. Places like ACT had to literally make up for the gaps in the Kerry ground game last year because all they did with the internet was try to raise money.

[Soxy]

Overall, and very unscientific, but the Dems seem to "do" the internet better.

Duh! That's because they invented the internet!

[Rex Kickass]

I'm not sure I'd agree that the Dems "do" the internet better.

 

Yeah, Dean was impressive in his ability to use the internet for fundraising, but after his campaign last year, it seemed like the only thing that Dems did using the internet was try to raise funds.  Can you recall a single Kerry email that did anything other than try to raise funds?  I can't.

 

There's so much more you can do in terms of spreading a message, keeping people on message, motivating grassroots, etc, that Kerry never did on his own.  Places like ACT had to literally make up for the gaps in the Kerry ground game last year because all they did with the internet was try to raise money.

 

I got six emails in the last month of the Kerry campaign that were calls to action and not about raising money. I did, however, get about 50 emails asking for cash too in the same time frame.

[YASNY]

There's actually a reason for this.

 

According to Orrin Hatch's own biography, when Clinton was trying to pick his first nominee, he had other people in mind other than Ginsburg.  Clinton then went to Hatch and asked him how he felt about the person Clinton was considering.

 

Hatch responded that the name Clinton had would provoke a major fight, and countered by asking if Clinton had looked at either Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer.

 

Breyer became Clinton's second nominee.

 

That's the story from Hatch's own autobiography.

 

That doesn't change a thing. Her political ideology was not an issue. She, in fact, dodged 36 questions about her ideology and Joseph Biden said that she wouldn't be forced to answer those questions. Seems the Dems want to have their cake and eat it, too.

[southsider2k5]

You'll note that the names that are mentionned who came up in the meeting didn't end up being the nominee (I was hoping for Prado as the best we could get out of Bush).

 

How do you know that at the meeting the Dems didn't give like 3 or 4 guys they couldn't support and say that Roberts was on that list?  I doubt it, since the guy seems chosen specifically to avoid a prolongued fight, but meeting with does not equal listening.

 

And listening doesn't equal picking the guy you are told to under threat of filibuster, either. Of course we aren't going to get a transcribed document that has all of the conversations to have picked apart, but I'd say meeting with somebody is a good indication you are working with somebody. Especially since I didn't hear anyone crying that he didn't work with us, I am apt to believe he at least listened to the Dems.

[mreye]

There's actually a reason for this.

 

According to Orrin Hatch's own biography, when Clinton was trying to pick his first nominee, he had other people in mind other than Ginsburg.  Clinton then went to Hatch and asked him how he felt about the person Clinton was considering.

 

Hatch responded that the name Clinton had would provoke a major fight, and countered by asking if Clinton had looked at either Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer.

 

Breyer became Clinton's second nominee.

 

That's the story from Hatch's own autobiography.

Actually:

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/hatch200507140809.asp

 

In 1993, President Clinton sought my input when considering a replacement for the retiring Justice Byron White. Some senators are today fond of waving my book Square Peg, in which I described cautioning President Clinton that confirming some candidates he was considering, such as then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, would be difficult. President Clinton instead nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and she was easily confirmed.

 

President Clinton sought my input without my demanding it because he believed it would help him fulfill his constitutional responsibility for making judicial nominations. He did so not because Senate Republicans threatened filibusters or demanded some kind of veto power over his nominations. We did not try to impose a "consensus" standard or insist that a nominee meet some super-majority "widespread support" threshold.

 

Instead, President Clinton sought my input because I had established a cooperative relationship with him, because he knew his nominees would be treated fairly. Senators demanding consultation and threatening filibusters today might instead consider taking the same approach. Perhaps earning consultation will work better than demanding it.

 

While I appreciate publicity for my book, I have yet to hear a Democratic senator who holds it up also quote from page 126, where I write: "One of the consequences of a presidential election...is that the winner has the right to appoint nominees to the court." In fact, at the same time I was giving President Clinton the input he sought, I also said on the Senate floor: "The President won the election. He ought to have the right to appoint the judges he wants to." Some who today demand consultation appear to have rejected that notion altogether.

[mreye]

Before the nomination...

 

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...13-100955-4453r

 

and after...

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../w142749D44.DTL

 

damn Bush for not meeting with Dems

pwnd!

[Balta1701]

That doesn't change a thing. Her political ideology was not an issue.  She, in fact, dodged 36 questions about her ideology and Joseph Biden said that she wouldn't be forced to answer those questions. Seems the Dems want to have their cake and eat it, too.

Here's a different perspective from someone else who spent some time looking over the transcript of those hearings.

 

One of the things the right has emphatically pushed over the past couple of weeks is the idea that Ruth Bader Ginsburg adopted the Clarence Thomas strategy of refusing to talk about anything at her confirmation hearings and that Democrats are therefore hypocrites for insisting that John Roberts not do the same. There's something to this, but as usual the right is rather egregiously overstating the case. Unfortunately, I'm having a little trouble finding all the relevant transcripts, but reading through the July 22, 1993, Judicary Committee hearing you can see that Ginsburg was quite forthcoming on a variety of issues. The position she maintained was that she would discuss things she'd written or said in the past but not her views on other, hypothetical issues.

 

That did involve a Thomas-esque dodge on Orrin Hatch's question of whether she thought the death penalty was unconstitutional (a dodge that's a little hard to understand, because the answer has turned out to be "no," which, presumably, was what Senator Hatch wanted to hear), but she gave full accounts of her views on a variety of other subjects. Crucially, she answered questions about issues on which she'd taken positions as an advocate for the ACLU and didn't just use the "I was working for a client" dodge. Since Roberts' career has overwhelmingly been spent in an advocacy capacity rather than a judicial or academic one, that's going to be essential, and by the Ginsburg standard it's all fair game.