RSSRoberts May Get 25 Democratic Votes?
That is the word coming from Elana Schor over at the The Hill,. a newspaper that bill itself as The Newspaper for and about the U.S. Congress. According to this, the Democrats are nervous about being seen as contentious about a nominee whom is perceived to not be a very dangerous threat to American’s, while we are in the midst of a national crisis in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Liberal wing of the party has been wanting to make this a battle royale, and to deny them will hurt the Democrat and the Far Left Causes in important fund raising. They have been counting on a pitch battle to fire up the troops since the retirement announcement has been made by Sandra Day O’Connor. Now it looks like the confirmation process will be a formality for John Roberts.
Democratic lobbyists’ greatest concern about Roberts is not pinning down his positions on federal preemption or civil rights, despite the recent Monday Group guest appearance of Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Many K Street Democrats instead questioned what they characterized as poorly coordinated messaging from liberal groups that has unduly influenced some lawmakers.
“The other dirty little secret the Democrats have to deal with is … there may be some in party who see it as, ‘It would be worthwhile to drag it out a little bit so we can raise some money off the deal’” from left-wing special interests, a Monday Group member said. “That’s shortsighted, and politically dangerous too.”
So it looks like that Roberts will pass with a huge majority, something that will make the hard core left very dissapointed and create a level of frustration that will be palatable. They can not stand for our President to have another political victory. And to top it off, this will mean that Roberts has the potential to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for the next 30 years.
Several attendees of the Monday Group, as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) biweekly lobbyist meetings are known, said the Democrats could suffer politically if their Roberts strategy misfires. Left-wing ideological groups are pressuring Democratic lawmakers to expose Roberts’s conservative record without workable grounds for a fight, Monday Group lobbyists said.
“It’s not a good thing for Democrats to be dragged into a visible, high-profile battle on him for weeks when Congress ought to be dealing with issues the public really cares about,” one key Democratic lobbyist said. “That’s the biggest danger for Democrats, if they get sucked into something like that because of the ideological left.”
Though some Democrats already have called for Congress to focus on aiding the blighted Gulf Coast as the new session begins, planning for the Roberts hearings likely will dominate the Monday Group’s next meeting, on Sept. 12. Informal discussions among some lobbyists and Democratic aides during the recess were said to yield little in the way of cohesive counsel
