The supreme court fight...

Jay Bookman:

We don’t know who Barack Obama will nominate to replace David Souter, but in some ways it doesn’t matter. The script for what’s about to happen has already been written, long before the play is cast.

from the NYT:

“There could not be a better issue to latch on to for a Republican renaissance to start building on — drawing some distinctions on issues,” said Wendy Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative organization. “I hope for and I expect a fight.”

So a fight it will be. That’s how you get the folks back home riled up. It’s how you get the money flowing in, how you draw the audience to the news channels.

Over at Politico, Ben Smith posts the contents of an internal memo outlining the conservative case against three of the possible nominees. My favorite extract is this:

“It is also unclear that a Justice Kagan would be an adequately independent check on executive excesses. She has argued in favor of greatly enhanced presidential control over the bureaucracy, which is concerning in light of President Obama’s unprecedented centralization of power in the White House.”

Imagine that. And for some reason I thought conservatives loved the idea of a powerful executive, and loved judges who let presidents do whatever they wanted.

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