Memo To Democrats: It's All About Griswold And Privacy

Now that Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination to the Supreme Court, we must now turn our attention to the next nominee.  Given the beating that President Bush has taken over Miers, there is little doubt that he will nominate someone with bullet-proof right wing credentials.

Given the numbers, it will be very difficult for the Democrats to block a nominee, no matter how disgustingly out of step they are with the views of the American people, but they can use the confirmation process to educate the public about just how far out of step the right wing cabal is.

During the ill-fated Miers effort, there was peripheral discussion of  Griswold v. Connecticut.  Senator Spector probed Miers for her views on Griswold.  Ann Coulter took Miers to task for not immediately repudiating Griswold.

It was "common sense" to allow married couples to buy contraception in Connecticut. That was a decision any randomly selected group of nine good bowlers might well have concurred with on the grounds that, "Well, it's just common sense, isn't it?"

But when the Supreme Court used common sense – rather than the text of the Constitution – to strike down Connecticut's law banning contraception, it opened the door to the Supreme Court rewriting all manner of state laws. By creating a nonspecific "right to privacy," Griswold v. Connecticut led like night into day to the famed "constitutional right" to stick a fork in a baby's head.

This isn't rank speculation about where "common sense" devoid of constitutional theory gets you: Miers told Sen. Arlen Specter she would have voted with the majority in Griswold.

What is Griswold you might ask?  It was the case that said states could not pass laws banning married couples from gaining access to contraception.  That's right.  It's the case that said MARRIED women had the right to purchase the pill. 

Once Griswold is gone, so is any hint of a right to privacy for the American people.  If the right wing is against that, the public should know it, and the right wing should pay the political price for those tragically misguided views.

Update November 1, 2005 @ 11:20 p.m.:  I wrote this before the Alito nomination, and it now applies in spades.  Though, perhaps I was too pessimistic about the odds of actually defeating a nominee out of the mainstream.  Either way, the task before Democrats remains the same.  We must demonstrate the Bush's nominee is not a conservative, but is instead a radical.