Taking the Stand: Pack the Supreme Court By Bruce Fein
President Bush would betray his popular mandate of last November if he neglects to nominate strong philosophical conservatives to the Supreme Court….
The Founding Fathers would not frown on President Bush’s philosophical packing of the Supreme Court in hopes of advancing a policy agenda. …
President Bush would mock the people’s verdict on Supreme Court justices in last November’s balloting if he neglects to appoint justices in the mold of Scalia, Thomas, and Bork. Bush unequivocally promised the same in his presidential campaign. In contrast, his defeated opponent, Senator John Kerry, pledged to appoint justices precommitted to celebrating the outlandish invention of a constitutional right to an abortion in Roe; and a homonymic interpretation of the Constitution epitomized by the same-sex marriage ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2003….
The American people thus confronted a stark choice, not an echo, regarding Supreme Court justices in decisively preferring Bush to Kerry. And Bush’s popular mandate to appoint Scalia–Thomas–Bork duplicates was reinforced by parallel voting for the U.S. Senate and 11 state referenda embracing the traditional understanding of marriage. …
President Bush would thus be guilty of bait-and-switch trickery if he reneged on his campaign promise to appoint philosophically conservative Supreme Court justices. …
President Bush’s detractors maintain that “moderates” in the mold of Associate Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and Stephen Breyer can be trusted to eschew airbrush artistry or homonymic interpretations of the Constitution. But the detractors are wrong. …
[T]he so-called moderates acclaimed by Bush’s critics are in reality engines of new constitutional rights and powers operating with 10 as opposed to the 20 cylinders employed by Associate Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. They do not subscribe to the Constitution and its 27 amendments in accord with the original meaning and purpose of the authors.
59 Million voted against Bush. Another 79 million did not vote at all. Bush has NO mandate. mjh