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On Friday night, I drove up to Santa Barbara for a dinner given by Ellen Nagler of The Broad View, mostly because I wanted to hear RJ Eskow play country music with his band The Red State Wranglers, but also because Oregon state senator Ron Wyden was going to be there. And I figure, as much time as I spend bitching about how people should be letting their Senators hear about their objections to John Roberts, how could I turn down an opportunity to bore my own senator in person by piling on with my two cents?

So I treed the poor man over a lovely salmon dinner and tried to remain mindful that he is, indeed, one of the good guys and has a 100% pro-choice score from NARAL, while expressing my dire concern that anyone who stands so clearly and openly against women’s rights as John Roberts should even be considered as a candidate for the Supreme Court. Wyden said he’d met with the guy for an hour recently, and that if he was in the room right now I’d probably like him even though I would disagree with everything he believed, because he’d sympathize with me for it. He said that Democrats were going to have a really hard time opposing Roberts because he’s very likeable and in the hearings he’ll be very winning.

And for all those people who are sitting around deluding themselves that Roberts is going to get on the court and do a Souter, Senator Wyden said, “There is no doubt in my mind that John Roberts will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

I mean, did anyone really think differently? For all the noise about “you can’t judge him by his wife’s opinions,” Roberts is a guy who’s been on the stump for the job for a year, meeting with Christo-fascists like Falwell and Dobson and earning their Good Housekeeping seal of approval. Do you really kid yourself into believing that he earned that by sitting there hemming and hawing over abortion? Get real.

And for those who say “well, Bush will only appoint someone worse” — that is no reason not to oppose a very bad candidate. It’s the weak rational of Vichy Democrats who are more interested in running for President than they are in representing the interests of the people who voted them into office in the first place, who are overwhelmingly pro-choice. With Republicans in disarray over Traitorgate and Preznit “Cindy Who?” now at 36% approval rating, the time has never been better to make a public show of the fact that the party stands for something.

He also said we owe yet another big heap of thanks to Sandra Day O’Connor, who would’ve stayed on the court ’til she was a hundred if Kerry had won.

As a side note — Wyden was also there with his extra-cool pro-choice fiance Nancy Bass, who owns the Strand bookstore in New York. Which just went to further shore up my theory that you can always spot the good guys by their cool wives.

And many thanks to the Heretik who did the above graphic as a special request. Please feel free to copy it and use it (with appropriate credit to the Heretik). I think it is tragically going to be quite useful as it becomes ever more apparent that both in this country and abroad, the operant modality is that “women’s social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy.“

Related posts:

  1. Senate Finance Delays Health Care Vote: Did Baucus Screw Wyden and Lose His Vote?
  2. Wyden, Unhappy with Way Amendment was Handled, Threatens “No” Vote
  3. Baucus, CBO Wrangling Denied Wyden Vote on “Choice” Amendment
  4. Health Care Reform: Wyden is Causing Trouble Again (for Reid)
  5. Reid, Wyden, Baucus Reach Agreement on Version of Free Choice Amendment