The Left Regroups With New "Strategery"

Liberal Oasis has a lengthy post lamenting "What went wrong?" with the Roberts nomination and lays out a plan for how to attack the next nomination.

Personally, I found a lot of this fascinating. I take the post's basic premise to be "we didn't define the nominee or attack him aggressively enough, and we lost". Here are a few examples of how they think things should go differently with the next nominee (emphasis is theirs):

"Activist leaders like Alliance for Justice, People for the American Way and Leadership Conference on Civil Rights need to do is disseminate whatever info they have on possible nominees to the mainstream media and to the blogosphere, in advance of the nomination."...

..."The game for right-wing nominees is to give empty, feel-good, non-ideological (or even liberal-sounding) testimony.

So if you don’t give the public and the media a reason to doubt the nominee’s credibility in advance, the nominee will easily generate misleading headlines like “Roberts Supports Right To Privacy.”

With a blank slate, there may not always be an opening to challenge a nomineeÂ’s credibility in advance, but Roberts provided some openings that were not exploited (such as his dishonesty about his Federalist Society membership.)"...

..."Once the questioning begins, actually question. DonÂ’t ramble.

Question succinctly and aggressively.

Question in a way that the public will understand what youÂ’re talking about. DonÂ’t delve into arcane legalese.

And follow-up aggressively. Do not passively give the nominee the last word time and time again when he or she is clearly bullshitting everyone."...

..."We can't be shocked that "plenty" of Senate Dems will vote for Roberts, because so little was done by liberal activists, pundits, bloggers, and politicians to create the conditions for a strong opposition.

If that doesn't change the next time around, we will badly lose again."

Now, I know I'm a more than a little biased here but my takeaway is this: attack potential nominees before the actual nomination so their credibility is damaged in advance, if the nominee is "blank slate" than create doubts about him or her by making spurious claims that just might stick, and be aggressive before, during and after the hearings. No?

This is exactly what happened with Roberts. The day he was nominated, the name of Edith Clement was circulating as a possible name and the Left viciously attacked her throughout the day until an hour before Roberts' name was scheduled to be announced and caught them completely flat-footed. The feeding frenzy only confirmed in the minds of the American people that no nominee would be acceptable, regardless of their qualifications and it kept them all distracted from the real nomination. Advantage: Bush

Judge Roberts, very much a "blank slate", was attacked by the likes of NARAL with an ad that suggested he was all but solely responsible for the bombing of an abortion clinic by an anti-abortion extremist. And a MoveOn.org ad was produced that tried to tie the aftermath of Katrina to a suggestion that Roberts was insensitive to human rights. Both of these ads caused a backlash because normal people in this country who don't suffer from the disease of Knee-Jerk Liberalism saw them for the misleading and slanderous pieces of propaganda that they were. Advantage: Bush

And while the author's post would call into question just how "aggressive" the questioning of Roberts was during the Committee hearings. When people watched any of the footage on TV, it was generally accepted that the tone and demeanor of the Democrat questioners was petty, mean-spirited and completely partisan in nature. Not to mention that Roberts wiped up the floor with these mental pygmies. Advantage: Bush

All in all, I'd say this strategy worked wonders...in getting Roberts confirmed, that is. Just another example of being "stuck on stupid!"

So by all means guys. Let's have some more for the next nominee. Only this time...a little more, please. With feeling.

Hat Tip to Memeorandum

Posted by: Gary at 02:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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