Another Souter?

I know we’re not supposed to talk about personalities and physical appearances when it comes to judging people’s worth, but the fact is that they are a part of the way we experience and understand reality. As he was being introduced by President Bush last night, Judge Roberts, seen in profile as he listened to the president, looked like a strong, solid guy. I thought, thank God, not another little half-man like Kennedy and Souter. But when Roberts began to speak and you could see his face in full, he looked weak. This was not a face with strength. In particular there was something odd and unfocused about his eyes. They did not inspire confidence or give you the feeling that there were solid principles there. Though I realized I was jumping to a sweeping conclusion about a person based on nothing but appearance, the uncomfortable feeling I had about Roberts didn’t go away.

I’m not the only one having these thoughts. Complementing my purely intuitive reaction, Ann Coulter makes a reasonable case that Roberts is another “stealth” nominee in the tradition of Souter. She writes:

[L]ets ponder the fact that Roberts has gone through 50 years on this planet without ever saying anything controversial. That’s just unnatural.

If a smart and accomplished person goes this long without expressing an opinion, they’d better be pursuing the Miss America title.

It should never be forgotten. In a society with a dominant liberal culture such as ours, a person who is not explicitly conservative will tend to be liberal, and will inevitably turn more and more liberal over time.

A reader writes:

You are absolutely right to invoke that rule about liberals and conservatives, of which the leading example is four of the seven Republican justices.

If Coulter is right, this choice would be consistent with Rove’s and Bush’s steady strategy of keeping the foolish social/religious conservatives on board by deception and with crumbs.

My reply:

Exactly. The only conservatives who are acceptable to liberals, such as the four justices you mention, are those who do not actually call themselves conservative, who do not embrace a conservative philosophy, who do not enunciate conservative positions, and who are, in fact, liberals. Liberals praise such people as “mainstream conservatives,” or even “mainstream traditionalists,” and make them the standard that conservatives must live up to in order not to be vilified.

Howard Sutherland writes:

Roberts is safely D.C. Establishment. GWB will probably get to pick a Chief Justice. Will he then pick a robust constitutionalist or a minority/woman? I know what I would bet on… Conservatives should stand by to be sold out again.

LA to HS:

Yes, he will top the great achievement of Ronald Reagan by picking, not just a mediocre, non-conservative woman for Associate Justice, but a mediocre, non-conservative woman/minority for Chief Justice.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 20, 2005 01:19 PM | Send