Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives

Think Progress writes that Harriet Miers was subjected to a different standard than John Roberts.

It is clear that, absent an unambiguous pledge to overturn Roe, the right holds women nominees to a different standard. They do it because they fear a woman justice will feel empathy towards other women making the agonizing choice of whether to have an abortion. They fear that a woman justice would not be willing to use criminal sanctions to regulate other women’s decisions.

I think this illustrates clearly a basic difference between liberals and conservatives, which is a key to understanding how the Republicans have been able to manage such a grip on national politics these last 36 years.

Liberals tend to be very narrowly focussed on specific issues. They are concerned with things like abortion rights, affirmative action, gay rights, etc. For this reason, the Democratic party is a big tent party, encompassing a wide range of narrow special interest groups with little in the way of an overarching philosophy. This in turn leads to much of the in-fighting and struggles Democratic candidates have had over the years pulling together a national campaign. They have to satisfy so many special interests that they can't pull it all together, leading to many defectors to Republican candidates (aka the Reagan Democrats).

From a judicial point of view, this leads to an emphasis on specific issues for judges, such as would they vote to overturn Roe v. Wade? The Think Progress view of Miers is focussed on very specific issues. She was to the right of Roberts on abortion, so why would right-wingers like Roberts more?

Conservatives, on the other hand, are more focussed on broader issues of approach and philosophy. They are concerned with things like small government, lower taxes, etc. Certainly there are interest groups within the conservative movement, but typically they have subordinated their internal differences on specific issues in favor of the broader philosophies which they share. (One of the big changes in the conservative movement that Bush has brought about is that the disparate groups in conservatism are not necessarily getting along any more.) This has lead to a tightly bound Republican party and a much more solid voting base for Republican candidates for national office.

From a judicial point of view, this leads to an emphasis more on judicial philosophy than on views of specific issues. I am loathe to quote her, but Ann Coulter puts it well.

From the beginning of this nightmare, I have taken it as a given that Miers will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. I assume that's why Bush nominated her. (It certainly wasn't her resume.) Pity no one told him there are scads of highly qualified judicial nominees who would also have voted against Roe. Wasn't it Harriet Miers' job to tell him that? Hey, wait a minute ...

But without a conservative theory of constitutional interpretation, Miers will lay the groundwork for a million more Roes. We're told she has terrific "common sense." Common sense is the last thing you want in a judge! The maxim "Hard cases make bad law" could be expanded to "Hard cases being decided by judges with 'common sense' make unfathomably bad law."

For most conservatives, it is not about how one would vote in a case that would challenge Roe v. Wade, it's about the principles that a justice would apply in any case. Roe is not an issue so much for its specifics, but rather for the judicial philosophy underlying it, the willingness to go far beyond what the Constitution says to make up things.

Roberts convinced conservatives that he believed in a conservative judicial philosophy. He might not vote to overturn Roe, but he could be counted on to not vote to create more Roes. A necessary pre-requisite to establishing this philosophy is that his fundamental qualifications as a legal scholar were unquestioned. In other to have a fully developed philosphy, one must first understand the field.

Where Miers failed was that no one ever believed in her basic capability as a justice. Maybe she could be counted on to overturn Roe v. Wade. For some in the special interest group that has tunnel vision on that one case, that may have been enough. But she never convinced anyone that she actually understood the Constitution, certainly not well enough to have developed a consistent, reliable philosophy on how to interpret it. As Coulter writes, this basic ignorance opens the door to many more poorly reasoned opinions like Roe. For this reason, Miers was rejected by those who supported Roberts.