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Monday, October 10, 2005

Oscar Wilde was right
Posted by Jill | 7:05 AM

"There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want. The other is getting it."


This spake our literary muse, Oscar Wilde, and truer words were never spoken -- especially where Roe v. Wade is concerned.

Michael Kinsley notes the political pitfalls of giving Christian conservatives what they want:

With President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, it turns out that Republicans don't want to buy a pig in a poke any more than Democrats do. They were bluffing when they claimed not to know or care about Roberts's views, beyond a vague commitment to avoid "legislating from the bench." They did care, but they thought they knew. The surprising conservative bitterness about Miers reinforces the suspicion of many liberals that "they must know something we don't" about Roberts. Conservatives have been complaining about the Supreme Court for half a century. After a series of false dawns, this would seem to be their true moment. Would they really let Bush squander this opportunity? Apparently not.

Unless, that is, you buy the even darker conspiracy theory that Republican apparatchiks don't really want a counterrevolution at the Supreme Court. Roe v. Wade has been very good to the Republican Party, keeping social and religious conservatives at a full boil of resentment. The last thing the party needs is to turn these motivated activists into satisfied customers, while stoking a fire under activists on the other side. So there was a game of double bluff going on: The conservatives who bluffed that they didn't care about Roberts's views -- and liberals shouldn't either -- were themselves being bluffed, perhaps, by Bushies who assured them that Roberts was on their side.
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