Dem Hopes for Beating Alito Rest on 20 Year Old Job Application

If you toss a bone to a starving dog, he's going to be pretty happy to get it, and the Dems are showing a similar reaction to the 20 year old job application which was released last week showing the Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito once wrote a statement that he felt that the Constitution did not protect abortion. The fact that he was right didn't slow the Dems down one bit.

Abortion is the holy sacrament of the Dem religion, and anyone showing opposition of any kind to abortion, regardless of how strong or weak the opposition, must be defeated. Thus sayeth Harry Reid.

Time Magazine has a piece on how that opposition may take shape:

Ever get a gift that looks beautiful but comes with a long list of special-care instructions? That's what opponents of Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito got last week when his 1985 application for a job in the Reagan Justice Department surfaced in Washington. In it, Alito espoused the idea that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion." With a solid majority of Americans in favor of legalized abortion, Alito's opponents thought they had finally found their cudgel. But the Senate Democrats, at least, did not seem prepared yet to use it bluntly: for Alito's nomination they have settled on a strategy that doesn't take abortion head on. "The tactic is going to be to frame it as a debate over broader rights, including privacy, civil rights and women's rights," says Jim Manley, the spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. This will avoid, Manley says, "the divisive debate over the word itself."

Democrats are wary because the majority of Americans are not dogmatic on the issue. While most want abortion to remain legal, they also support restraints on its use, and politicians who fail to strike a credible balance pay a price (think John Kerry). You could already see the Senate Democrats' cautious approach by observing their behavior last week. In a series of speeches Wednesday, Reid and Senators Ted Kennedy and Charles Schumer spoke on Alito and the memo, but danced around abortion. On Thursday, the Senate's top five Democrats held a 40-min. strategy session in the anteroom of Reid's office with about 15 representatives of outside groups opposed to Alito's nomination. Abortion may have been on everyone's mind, but it was barely mentioned.

If the Dems feel that mentioning the "A" word is going to be a problem for them, the GOP response should be easy. Make the debate about abortion and let the chips fall where they may. Relying on statements made 20 years ago while ignoring 15 years of judicial decisions is not a winning strategy, and if the GOP has their act together at all (never a sure bet these days), they should be able to bat down any lobs the Dems toss over the net.

John Leo takes a humorous look at the Dem plan:

Folks, we're talking here with Terry Carville-Begala, the famed political strategist. How goes the fight to trash Bush's Supreme Court nominee, Sam Alito?

Well, it's just plain hard work, Geraldo. He's a normal Republican pick, just as Breyer and Ginsburg were normal Democratic picks. But when we get through with him, he'll look like Caligula.

How will you do that?

Well, we can't say he'll have women forced into back-alley abortions, as Teddy did to Bork. That's considered crude today. Our model is what Chuck Schumer did to Charles Pickering. The judge had a segregationist past, then turned around and became a civil rights hero. Charles Evers, Medgar's brother, said Pickering was one of the men who helped break the Klan in Mississippi. But Schumer played the old segregationist card brilliantly, and it worked. You don't argue facts. You create impressions.

Read the rest of it here.