E.J. Dionne’s Washington Post column today points out the crushing hypocrisy of the Republicans vis-a-vis Supreme Counrt nominations and just about everything else.
Bush single-handedly undercut the conservatives’ long-standing claim that the Senate and the rest of us owed great deference to a president’s choice for the court. Conservatives displayed absolutely no deference to Bush when he picked someone they didn’t like. The actual conservative “principle” was that the Senate should defer to the president’s choice — as long as that choice was acceptable to conservatives. Some principle.
…
Conservatives condemned liberals who suggested it was worth knowing how Roberts’s religious convictions might affect his judging. But when Miers started running into trouble with conservatives, the Bush administration encouraged its allies to talk up Miers’s deep religious convictions to curry favor among social conservatives.
…
The willingness of conservatives to abandon what they had once held up as high and unbending principles reveals that this battle over the Supreme Court is, for them, a simple struggle for power. It is thus an unfortunate reminder of the highly unprincipled Supreme Court decision in 2000 that helped put Bush in the White House. Conservatives who had long insisted on deference to states’ rights put those commitments aside when doing so would advance the political fortunes of one of their own.
…
Registration is required to read the whole thing.