Right On The Right

The Conservative blogosphere is still battling over whether or not we should rally behind John McCain in November, and I've went on the record as saying yes. This is the first installment of a series of posts explaining why we need to back McCain. The next President is likely to nominate as many as four replacements for the Supreme Court, and these replacements will have a major impact on our nation. Professor Stephen Bainbridge from PJM attacks the issue:

Those of us who waged war against Miers succeeded in part because in the 2000 campaign Bush had explicitly promised to nominate justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. We demanded that Bush keep that promise and, as it became clear that Miers was made from a different mold, we kept up a stead drum beat of criticism. In the end, we won. Miers was forced to withdraw and Samuel Alito became the newest member of the Supreme Court.

If a President McCain were to nominate a David Souter clone, the right’s netroots would have a collective conniption fit that would make the Miers fight look like pattycake. We might not win, but we’d at least bleed McCain of enough political capital to give even Warren Rudman second thoughts.

All of which suggests that threats by conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to take their ball and go home if McCain is the nominee make no sense (and I say this as someone who has made similar rumblings in the past). The next President likely will nominate 3-4 Supreme Court justices and 200 to 400 lower court judges. Given the astonishing longevity of Supreme Court justices, moreover, the next President’s Supreme Court picks easily could serve for two or more decades.

Those 200-400 lower court judges will be just as important as the 3-4 (I think it's more probable there will be 2-3) Supreme Court appointments. John McCain fought for Roberts and Alito in the Senate, and we can push him to live up to his campaign promise of nominating Roberts and Alito types. Bainbridge goes on to discuss who the Democrats are liable to throw up, and they're activist judges who would legislate from the bench. If you care about our courts, back John McCain.