Federal Judiciary

Now That Novak Has Spoken...

By Quin

Now that Bob Novak has reconfirmed what K-Lo and John Fund reported about McCain's comments re Alito, and Wendy Long independently has re-re-confirmed it, it makes even more stark the similar lapse into his real views that McCain fell into in 1999 when he told the San Fran Examiner that he would NOT favor the overturning of Roe. I keep trying to tell everybody that the "straight talk express" is anything but. The man is different in private than in public. And what is private is a seething mass of anger against the conservative movement.

That said, the absolutely key thing for us here who believe in "Confirm[ing] Them" is the case of Jim Haynes. I will keep repeating this forever. McCain didn't just stand by and let the Dems defeat Haynes; instead, he played an active role (second only to the role of Lindsey Graham) in blocking this fine nominee (and thus in contributing to the loss of the once-conservative Fouth Circuit). He allowed Haynes to be smeared by his buddy Graham. And the shame of it is, if McCain had merely checked the facts, he would have seen that what Haynes did was the OPPOSITE of promoting torture... and thus, McCain would have vociferously supported him. The reality is that on not a single other nomination, ever, was McCain in better position to use his moral authority to ensure that a nominee was confirmed. If even John McCain, victim of torture and outspoken critic of torture, argued publicly that what Haynes did was to LESSEN the chance of torture, then it would have been almost impossible for the Dems to successfully filibuster Haynes on those grounds. After all, there would have been no "extraordinary circumstance," and McCain's buddy Joe Lieberman would have joined in leading the charge to confirm Haynes.

Instead, McCain advanced the smear of Haynes. And, when it was basically too late, I am told he privately admitted that a review of the facts showed that Haynes was NOT guilty of promoting torture -- but McCain STILL did nothing to reverse the record or to try to revive the nomination.

This is big stuff. It's important. It shows McCain's true colors. The result isn't, I repeat, bad just for Haynes, but for the whole country. The Fourth Circuit is no longer reliably conservative, specifically because McCain's buddies Graham and John Warner -- both of whom are of the Fourth Circuit, and both of whom were in position to advance their nominees -- instead fiddled while the circuit court's conservatism went up in flames.

This is a disaster, and McCain contributed a great deal to it. Fie on him.

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Full post as published by ConfirmThem on January 31, 2008 (boomark / email).