My Roberts Hearing Prediction

13 Sep, 2005 by John Hawkins

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Don’t get too up, too down, or too excited in general about the Roberts hearing because it’s unlikely anything really crucial is going to happen.

Instead, here’s how you can expect it to go if there are no big surprises: grandstanding Democratic Senators and a few RINOS will unleash stemwinders about whatever issue they want to appear to care about. Then, after blathering on for a while, they’ll ask Roberts a question or two.

Roberts will respond by two stepping around the questions and saying little of substance. This is not only because he’ll be following precedent, but because he’s not going to prejudge a case that he might have to rule on when he gets to the Supreme Court.

So, even though people on the left and right will pour through the tea leaves trying to find hints of how he’s going to rule on particular issues or things to attack him with, it’s going to be all for naught.

Then after a period of time there will be a vote, and Roberts will be confirmed easily. Then the Republican Senators will congratulate themselves for getting him through and the Democrats will try to assure their base they did all they could to stop him and mutter darkly about how John Roberts will take the country backwards to the “bad old days” somehow or another.

After that, the same basic thing will happen whomever W. picks next, except there will likely be more controversy, because that judge will probably have a longer conservative track record.

If a filibuster comes up, a woman accuses Roberts of sexually harassing her, or Roberts decides to tell people how he’s going to vote on Roe v. Wade “just for the fun of it,” I’ll make sure and cover it, but those are all unlikely events. Until then, don’t look for a lot of posts about the hearings, because despite all the pomp and circumstance, there isn’t all that much actually happening.

*** Update #1 ***: By the way, don’t freak out because Roberts is saying that Roe v. Wade “is settled as the precedent of the court.”

All he’s doing there is agreeing that the Supreme Court has clearly upheld Roe v. Wade. What he said has no bearing whatsoever on how he would personally vote if he were on the Supreme Court and he had an opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade.