Supporting the Party

Conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt has offered Seven Reasons To Support The GOP's Nominee regardless of who it is. I'm guessing this is largely in response to James Dobson's remarks (over and over) that he would not vote at all if the options were either Clinton and Obama or McCain.

Hugh's "seven reasons" are simple and straightforward:

There are seven reasons for anyone to support the eventual nominee no matter who it is: The war and six Supreme Court justices over the age of 68.

I suppose I'm a little surprised to think that "the war" is such a fundamental issue (and obviously Hugh believes that the only viable possibility is to stay in it). But it's the Supreme Court justices that I find most amazing.

First, some of the more recent, bad appointments to the Supreme Court came from "good" presidents. Ronald Reagan installed Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy reaffirmed Roe v Wade in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and supported gay rights in both Romer v. Evans (1996) and the more recent Lawrence v. Texas (2003). The senior George Bush appointed David Souter. He voted with Kennedy to reaffirm Roe v Wade in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. So having a good president in office doesn't secure good justices. (Note: By "good justices" I mean "Supreme Court justices who will see things they way I do", whoever "I" is in that sentence. Generally speaking the "I" here is "conservatives".)

Worse, McCain has already stated that he has no intention of appointing the likes of another Alito. He has been quoted as suggesting he was "too conservative". Now, the fact that McCain denies the statement may be heartening, but it may be just another case of "say what they want to hear". Then there is the question of exactly how good of a Supreme Court justice nomination a good president could get through a Democrat-dominated Congress? And there is the problem of the McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform. Conservative justices went against McCain's reform; liberal justices supported it. Would McCain appoint a justice who would have the serious potential of overturning his own campaign finance reform?

There is another side to the question regarding voting for whomever the GOP puts up. One argument is that it is better to put a "less than good" president in office than a "clearly bad" president. Obviously there is no question, for instance, that a pro-abortion (sorry, pro-choice) president wouldn't be concerned about appointing a Supreme Court justice that is willing to uphold the murder of babies in the womb. That's bad. But I wonder about the other side. While I can clearly see that a bad president is bad, I question the wisdom of installing "the lesser of two evils." There is a tendency, if that happens, to move the thinking of the conservative side toward that "lesser evil." It goes something like this. "He's our guy, now, so we need to support him." And what was "bad" to us before he came into office becomes something that we support. It is the devolution of conservative values. It provides substantiation to views that we would have opposed. In the case of a "bad" president, we can stand back and say, "See? That's bad!" In the case of the "lesser evil", we don't quite have that luxury because we put them there.

So, which is worse? Is it worse to have an obviously bad president who will appoint obviously bad Supreme Court justices ... but will be quite distinct from us? Or is it worse to elect a president who isn't quite as bad, but whom we support to prevent the "bad one" from taking office, and who may or (likely) may not appoint any type of Supreme Court justice that would do us any good? I'm personally more concerned about the slide than the leap. And I don't see why anyone should conclude that "Christian" = "GOP". That doesn't seem to be an equation I find in my Bible.