It matters enormously, in every non-political sense, who
President Bush nominates to succeed “moderate” Sandra Day O’Connor
on the Supreme Court. But politically it matters not at all. We are
about to endure a Supreme Court confirmation that will make the
1968 Chicago Democratic convention look tame. Only a day after
O’Connor announced her retirement, and without a successor in
sight, NOW president Kim Gandy declared a state of emergency
regarding women’s rights. Soon we’ll see everything from the
Million Mooron March on Washington to a Senate filibuster showdown
that the President may not win. This is win or go home time for
Dubya. To win, the President needs to adapt his war strategy to his
politics: the best defense against the coming liberal onslaught is
a good offense. One that absorbs much of the Senate’s excess energy
and corners the liberals in the same way they were cornered last
year.
The President should take the offense in the Supreme Court fight
for one simple reason: the libs are vastly more vulnerable
politically than he is. If he allows them to dominate politics with
the confirmation process, they may win that fight and too many
others. Decisive, forceful leadership on the Court and other issues
is the way to stop the Deanocrats in their tracks. The President’s
victory last November is attributable, in no small part, to social
conservatives who voted not so much for Mr. Bush as against
legalizing same-sex marriages, against courts that toy with the
Pledge of Allegiance, and against a man who they obviously could
not rely on to defend their personal freedoms at home or their
nation abroad. When the President nominates someone who produces
howls and shrieks from NOW, Michael Moore, and Howard Dean, the
Americans who re-elected George Bush in November can be
re-energized, and the libs again defeated.
The liberals will suffer the most when — as is almost certain
— Chief Justice Rehnquist also resigns and the President nominates
a second judicial conservative. Howard Dean’s head may implode,
others will spontaneously combust, and the rest will vanish into
their psychiatrists’ offices. (I once recommended the purchase of
Roche Pharmaceuticals and GlaxoSmithKline stock because they make
Wellbutrin and Prozac. If you don’t buy them now, you really should
die poor.) The libs, not Dubya, will suffer Confirmation Paralysis.
It is thus precisely the right time to pull out all the stops, and
accomplish some critical objectives.
For each liberal attack there must be a counterattack. Today we
may learn from the Time magazine papers divulged to a
grand jury that the source of the leak of Joe Wilson’s wife’s
identity as a CIA agent was White House chief of staff Karl Rove.
If it was Rove who leaked the story, the President and the Attorney
General should defend Rove to the death for one simple reason:
there was no crime committed. If it wasn’t, the Attorney General
should order an end to this out of control investigation. And this
would be a good time to go ahead — as publicly as possible — with
the criminal investigation of Senators Rockefeller, Wyden and
Durbin for their leak of the highly classified satellite program
last December. Failing to push that investigation — into an act
much more likely to be criminal than the Plame leak — has garnered
precisely zero goodwill from Senate Dems, including those who
should likely be serving their terms at Club Fed, not in the
Senate. It’s time to be doing what the law requires: investigate
fully, and push every political — and judicial — button to punish
those who are so apparently deserving of punishment.
The libs will also assume that with the President focused on the
Supreme Court, they will be able to have their way with the war.
They will try to impose funding restrictions on the Iraq war, and
there will be much more talk of withdrawal schedules. Anyone who
doubts that the Dems will demand a reduction of funding for the war
and some schedule for withdrawal hasn’t been listening to them for
the past 37 years. And there’s only one way to deal with that: let
the Big Dog run. It’s well past time that we regain the strategic
initiative in the war, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and
the Joint Chiefs are the men to trust with that job. No one in
Foggy Bottom — of either gender — is.
The war in Iraq is going well, but is strategically stagnant. We
know, all too well, that the Syrian sanctuary is allowing
terrorists to regroup, retrain and smuggle people and weapons into
Iraq. One senior Defense Department official told me that the
reason we aren’t doing what we should be doing in Syria is that
there are some nations we’d rather not go to war with now. Okay,
fine. There are many things we can do with — and to — Syria with
a secret Presidential Decision Directive. The President should sign
such a directive to authorize decisive action against Syria and all
the terrorists it hides. The Defense Department is capable of much
more than it is being asked. It’s time for the President to regain
the strategic initiative in this war. Secretly and decisively we
can turn Syria into a null quantity, and undo the Iranian nuclear
program. Once that’s begun, let’s declassify the PDD and let the
Senate chew on that for a while.
Our economy is suffering daily damage from the incredibly high
price of oil. Stop-gap measures such as opening the Alaska Natural
Wildlife Refuge to drilling are good, but only help at the margins.
The President should take on an Oil Offensive, pressuring OPEC to
reduce prices while demanding Congress act on measures making the
construction of nuclear power plants possible on a fast-track. If
we’re going to do it, and we must, we shouldn’t have to await
another two decades of environmentalist lawsuits and congressional
buffoonery. If this — and other energy measures — are to
accomplish anything, they must be done quickly. JFK said we should
put a man on the moon in less than a decade, and we did. There
should be dozens of new nuclear power plants on line by 2010. The
President should ask the Congress to join him in making this
happen.
Next should be the recess appointment of John Bolton to the UN
ambassadorship. Sen. Joe Biden, whose presidential ambition is now
declared, has said clearly that Bolton will never be confirmed.
When it becomes obvious that the Supreme Court nominee is stalled,
the President should appoint Bolton over the next recess. This will
show determination, not disrespect for the Senate opposition. It
will help, not hurt, the chances that the coming filibuster will
fail.
Last, and decidedly not least, let’s forget NAFTA, CAFTA and
whateverthehellelseAFTA. We have some real allies who are not given
preferential trade treatment. The President should open
negotiations with Turkey, Poland and other European nations who
could benefit from better trade with us. Those negotiations should
absorb a lot of the Senate’s excess energy.
The liberals will make their last stand on the Supreme Court
confirmations of this year and next. They can win, if quavering
Republicans such as John Warner — and the RINOs such as the Ladies
of Maine — don’t stand with the President on the filibuster. But
they will lose if the President takes the battle to them.
TAS contributing editor Jed Babbin is the author
of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are
Worse Than You Think (Regnery, 2004).
