January 15, 2001
“The Court, the
Court, the Court.” That mantra was invoked by
all manner of well-meaning people during the late presidential
campaign. “We can’t waste our vote on Buchanan.
We have to vote for George W. Bush. He’s going to
reshape the Supreme Court with his appointments. The Court,
the Court, the Court.” I was viewed as something of a
nine-headed troglodyte for simply reciting the simple truth that
as governor of Texas the man who is now president-elect
appointed four pro-aborts to the Texas Supreme Court, each of
whom voted in March of 2000 to overturn a mere
parental-notification bill that had been passed by the Texas
legislature. “That doesn’t matter,” I was told
over and over again. “Bush will be different as President.
You wait and see. He wants to save the babies.”
Readers of my newsletter Christ or Chaos know
how entirely consistent I have been in predicting that a President
George W. Bush would nominate to serve on the federal bench
the exact sort of people he placed on the bench throughout the
Texas judiciary. (Indeed, Bush is so thoroughly predictable that it
is really unfair to even make these predictions.) I have gone so far
as to say that Bush might even elevate one of his Texas pro-abort
pals to the nation’s high court.
Well, guess what, folks? Bush is going to name Texas Supreme
Court Judge Al Gonzalez, a pro-abort (termed a
“moderate” Republican by the media), as his White
House counsel. That is a prelude to Gonzalez’s being
tapped to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States as the
first person of Mexican-American heritage to be so honored.
Bush knows full well that anyone who opposes Gonzalez’s
nomination to serve on the Court — perhaps even as chief
justice to replace William Rehnquist when he retires — will
be tarred and feathered as a bigot. The new president will thus
seek to marginalize and isolate the handful of U.S. senators
— New Hampshire’s Bob Smith, North
Carolina’s Jesse Helms, possibly Oklahoma’s Don
Nickles — who might raise a stink over Gonzalez’s
nomination. Oh, I can see how a Gonzalez nomination to the
Supreme Court would play out. Indeed, it would be Sandra Day
O’Connor, Part Deux. How very ironic.
Remember, former California Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan
was sworn in as president on January 20, 1981 (hard to believe
it’s been twenty years since then). A lot of pro-lifers,
including me, really believed that Reagan was going to do
something to help reverse Roe v. Wade. Republicans
had gained control of the Senate for the first time since the 1952
elections. There was a working pro-life majority in the House.
There were high expectations as Reagan took office.
However, Reagan was surrounded by pro-aborts within the
White House, starting with his wife, Nancy Davis Reagan, who
had a lot more influence behind the scenes than anyone truly
understood at the outset of the Reagan years. White House Chief
of Staff James Baker was a George Bush
“moderate.” And the Deputy Chief of Staff, Michael
Deaver, was a pro-abort who had been instrumental in advising
Reagan to sign California’s baby-killing bill into law in
1967 when the latter was the Golden State’s governor. It
was the considered judgment of the Reagan inner circle that the
appointment of a woman to the Supreme Court to replace
outgoing Associate Justice Potter Stewart, an appointee of
President Eisenhower (and a close friend of the late Connecticut
Senator Prescott Bush, father of then-Vice President George
Herbert Walker Bush), would help Reagan close a perceived
“gender gap” with women voters.
Pro-life activists rightly felt betrayed. They had vouched for
Reagan’s pro-life credentials despite the fact that he
supported abortion in the cases of rape, incest, and alleged
threats to the life of a mother. They overlooked his selection of
the pro-abortion former congressman, former U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations, former U.S. Trade Representative to
China, and former director of the CIA George Bush as vice
president, wanting to believe that Bush really meant it when he
said he had a change of heart on the matter after Dr. John Wilkie,
founder of the National Right to Life Committee, gave him a
presentation on the issue. Thus, many pro-life activists really
believed that Reagan would come through for them with respect
to his Court nominations, which is why they were bitterly
disappointed with his nomination of O’Connor, who
turned out to be the only appointment to the Supreme Court he
would make during his first term.
American Life League president Judie Brown and Conservative
Caucus Foundation chairman Howard Phillips testified before
the Senate Judiciary Committee about O’Connor’s
nomination. Both presented incontrovertible evidence about
O’Connor’s pro-abortion voting record as a
member of the Arizona State Senate. None of that meant a
blessed thing to supposedly pro-life senators (most of whom,
obviously, supported abortion in the same instances as Reagan).
No, the “conservative” Reagan had nominated
O’Connor. They were not about to say no to the man who
had survived an assassin’s bullet and was beloved by the
American public. If Sandra Day O’Connor was the
woman Reagan wanted, she was the woman he would get on the
nation’s high court. Nobody wanted to be termed a
“sexist” by voting against O’Connor’s
nomination.
Well, it’s happening all over again. George W. Bush places
a very high value on personal loyalty to himself from his
associates. One must demonstrate unswerving fealty to him to be
included as part of his “inner circle.” The pro-abort
Al Gonzalez, who had served as Bush’s gubernatorial
counsel before he was placed on the Texas Supreme Court, is just
such a man, loyal to the new president-elect to a fault. Bush
wants to demonstrate his own appreciation to Gonzalez for his
proven loyalty — and at the same time prove to his liberal
critics that he really meant it when he said that he had no litmus
test for his judicial nominees. After all, there is a working
pro-abortion majority of 56-44 in the Senate that convened on
January 3. Bush had planned all along to nominate a pro-abort as
his first election to the Supreme Court. The political realities in
the Senate provide him with great cover to do so. And who is
going to oppose a Mexican-American? Nobody wants to be
called a racist, right?
The record of Republican nominees to serve on the Supreme
Court has been spotty. Reagan gave us O’Connor. He
also gave us Antonin Scalia, who, as I have noted in Christ
or Chaos, is essentially a legal positivist who eschews the
use of the natural law in constitutional interpretation. When
Reagan tried to appoint Judge Robert Bork to the Court in 1987,
he was met with a torrent of opposition from the pro-aborts in
the Senate, then controlled by the Democrats. He had to settle
for Anthony Kennedy, who has turned out to be a consistent vote
in favor of the “right” of a woman to kill her child in
the womb. Remember, this, however: there were several
Republicans (Arlen Specter and John Chafee among them) who
opposed Bork’s nomination vigorously. They had made
support for child-killing a litmus test for themselves insofar as
confirmation of nominees to serve on the Supreme Court was
concerned.
The first President Bush gave us David Souter and Clarence
Thomas, who is arguably the only justice on the Supreme Court
who uses, however subtly, the natural law as the basis of his
decisions. Souter, however, was exposed by Howard Phillips as a
man who had voted to permit so-called elective baby-killing at a
hospital in New Hampshire on whose board of trustees he
served. Just as Sandra Day O’Connor’s
pro-abortion record meant nothing to supposedly pro-life
senators, so was it the case that Souter’s demonstrated
pro-abortion position was overlooked. He was confirmed by a
vote of 99-0 in 1990. How very just it was, therefore, to find
Souter on the side of the justices voting for the position of Al
Gore in the case of Bush v. Gore on December 12.
The Clinton years have seen Republicans rubber-stamping
almost all of President Clinton’s nominees to serve on all
levels of the federal judiciary. Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen
Breyer were confirmed with virtual unanimity on the part of
pro-life Republicans, who also voted to confirm Clinton’s
picks to serve on vacancies on the 88 U.S. District Courts and
twelve U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal. The life issue has meant
nothing to the senators who say they are pro-life. It is no
accident, you see, that neither the National Right to Life
Committee nor the Christian Coalition includes judicial
confirmation votes on the fraudulent voter
“scorecards” they produce and distribute to voters.
Can’t do anything that explodes the utter mythology of
Republicans being champions of the unborn, can we?
Mark my words: the only people who will register opposition to
Al Gonzalez when Bush nominates him for the Supreme Court
will be Gary Bauer and Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan and
Howard Phillips. Pro-life senators will fall in line for
Bush’s nominee. Father Frank Pavone will go into hiding.
Wanda Franz and the National Right to Life Committee will
send out newsletters praising the nomination (thereby continuing
the policy of outright deception they have practiced for so very
long). Others will say that we have to overlook
Gonzalez’s pro-abortion record, that he will change once
he is on the Court. “Scalia will change Gonzalez,”
we’ll be told. “If Bush is selecting him, he
can’t be pro-abortion, not really.” Thus, Gonzalez
will take his place on the Court alongside David Souter and
Sandra Day O’Connor. Look for Bush’s second
nominee to serve on the Supreme Court to be a pro-abortion
Asian-American. Once again, you read it here first.
Obviously, this was all so predictable. Bush is ridiculously
predictable. And the placid, compliant reaction of delusional
pro-lifers will also be predictable: they will continue to close their
eyes, telling themselves (and those of us who are mean enough to
remind them of reality) that Bush is better than Gore, a mantra
that will replace “the Court, the Court, the Court.”
How much better is Bush than Gore when Bush will make it a
point to place people on the Court who believe in the destruction
of our Lord mystically in the person of unborn children? Sandra
Day O’Connor, Part Deux, indeed.
As Catholics, we have the obligation to see the world clearly
through the eyes of the true faith. Reality is what it is. Nobody
who supports one single abortion as a matter of principle is
pro-life. Nobody who believes that abortion is a matter of
“opinion” understands the prophetic nature of the
life issue. Nobody who appoints pro-aborts to his government
cares one whit about helping to foster a culture of life.
The sad part of what we are witnessing at present is rather
obvious to me. Just as Al Gore lives in a fantasy world where he
has convinced himself he actually won the presidency on
November 7, so do many pro-lifers live in a fantasy world where
religious faith must be placed in Republican office-holders even
after they betray the cause of life one time after another.
Are we ever going to wake up?
Our Lady, Mother of Life, pray for us.
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