You Are the Sucker

So some PUMAs — the acronym stands for “Republican” — met with John McCain. The PUMAs immediately agreed to purchase an $1,800 vacuum cleaner with a 30-year extended warranty:

Bower said he’d liked McCain’s answer on judges, in which he “pointed out that he supported Bill Clinton with both Ginsberg [sic] and Breyer.”

Of course he supported the appointments of Ginsburg and Breyer by a Democratic president. Breyer — easily the most moderate member of the Court’s liberal bloc — was confirmed 87-9. Ginsburg, who on the appellate court voted most often with Ken Starr, has also not been a Brennan/Marshall liberal, and was all but hand-picked by Orrin Hatch was confirmed 96-3. You have to understand virtually nothing about politics to think that McCain’s votes tell us anything about the kind of justices he’ll appoint.

Of course, alleged “progressives” with an apparent preference order of Clinton > McCain > Obama are idiots by definition, so this isn’t surprising. To add to the comedy, Mickey Kaus happily buys the Nebraska oceanfront time-share. According to Kaus, this proves that McCain doesn’t really believe any of that stuff about “Roberts, Alito, and Scalia” (all of whom he also voted for), because…look, it’s Halley’s Comet! Perhaps more relevant here are his votes for the actually contested nominations of Bork and Thomas. At any rate, of course I believe that McCain would appoint another Alito or Roberts, since his record on all the relevant issues suggests that he will and he will be constrained by a base (cf. Harriet Miers) that has strong preferences about judicial appointments. And certainly, his touting of meaningless votes for justices as moderate as could be expected from a Democratic president to an audience of disgruntled “Democrats” means less than nothing.

The best part: the title of Kaus’s post is “Suckers! Part XVIII.” At least he’s honest in describing himself…