SCLM

My theory, which I'd mentioned to a few folks the other day, is that Bush's strategy in nominating the grossly underqualified John Roberts for Chief Justice is simply that even if the Democrats actually grow a spine and oppose him for that office, they'll be unlikely to oppose Bush's second nominee for the position (I mean, they wouldn't want to be perceived as an actual opposition party or anything), who'd be someone like Scalia.

It looks as if the mainstream media is reading it the same way. Here are some excerpts from the terribly objective AP article:

"No Democrat has yet publicly opposed Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court, with several actually praising the federal appeals court judge when he was set to be O'Connor's replacement. Assuming no more than a handful of Republicans would fail to vote for Roberts, the only way Democrats might stop Roberts' confirmation would be through a politically bruising filibuster fight, which might weaken them just as President Bush makes a new nomination to replace O'Connor." Right: actually having principles might "weaken" the Democrats.

And I love this language (from elsewhere in the same article): "After turning twice to Roberts, Bush faces increasing pressure to name a woman or a minority, and to replace O'Connor's swing vote with a more reliable conservative." A little of this, a little of that: no mention that those pressures are coming from rather opposite directions, because that would require, you know, some degree of thought and analysis rather than just the blind, automatic gesture of being "fair and balanced," as if it doesn't matter where political forces flow from. Plus there's the lovely final phrase. "More reliable conservative"? So conservatives just are more reliable than "swing voters" (the possibility that one might actually hold principles which cause one sometimes to agree with Bush and other times disagree apparently is inconceivable here). Oh I'm sure the gloss is supposed to "more reliably conservative," with no implication that conservatives are actually any more reliable than anyone else - but the poor phrasing just happens to tilt things the Bushies' way.

Finally, the first sentence of the next paragraph: "Liberal groups are trying to drum up support to fight Roberts' ascension to chief justice anyway..." That's right, those nutty quixotic liberals, clearly with no hope, are going to oppose the nomination "anyway" even though clearly, we objective journalists can see they haven't the chance of an icecube addressed by a blowtorch.

There's your So-Called Liberal Media in action for today.