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  AMERICAN CONSERVATISM
Holding Court
There's a crackdown over Miers, not a "crackup."

BY RUSH LIMBAUGH
Monday, October 17, 2005 12:01 a.m.

I love being a conservative. We conservatives are proud of our
philosophy. Unlike our liberal friends, who are constantly looking for
new words to conceal their true beliefs and are in a perpetual state of
reinvention, we conservatives are unapologetic about our ideals. We are
confident in our principles and energetic about openly advancing them.
We believe in individual liberty, limited government, capitalism, the
rule of law, faith, a color-blind society and national security. We
support school choice, enterprise zones, tax cuts, welfare reform,
faith-based initiatives, political speech, homeowner rights and the war
on terrorism. And at our core we embrace and celebrate the most
magnificent governing document ever ratified by any nation--the U.S.
Constitution. Along with the Declaration of Independence, which
recognizes our God-given natural right to be free, it is the foundation
on which our government is built and has enabled us to flourish as a
people.

We conservatives are never stronger than when we are advancing our
principles. And that's the nature of our current debate over the
nomination of Harriet Miers. Will she respect the Constitution? Will
she be an originalist who will accept the limited role of the judiciary
to interpret and uphold it, and leave the elected branches--we, the
people--to set public policy? Given the extraordinary power the Supreme
Court has seized from the representative parts of our government, this
is no small matter. Roe v. Wade is a primary example of judicial
activism. Regardless of one's position on abortion, seven unelected and
unaccountable justices simply did not have the constitutional authority
to impose their pro-abortion views on the nation. The Constitution
empowers the people, through their elected representatives in Congress
or the state legislatures, to make this decision.

Abortion is only one of countless areas in which a mere nine lawyers in
robes have imposed their personal policy preferences on the rest of us.
The court has conferred due process rights on terrorists detained at
Guantanamo Bay and benefits on illegal immigrants. It has ruled that
animated cyberspace child pornography is protected speech, but certain
broadcast ads aired before elections are illegal; it has held that the
Ten Commandments can't be displayed in a public building, but they can
be displayed outside a public building; and the court has invented
rationales to skirt the Constitution, such as using foreign law to
strike down juvenile death penalty statutes in over a dozen states.

For decades conservatives have considered judicial abuse a direct
threat to our Constitution and our form of government. The framers
didn't create a judicial oligarchy. They created a representative
republic. Our opposition to judicial activism runs deep. We've
witnessed too many occasions where Republican presidents have nominated
the wrong candidates to the court, and we want more assurances this
time--some proof. The left, on the other hand, sees the courts as the
only way to advance their big-government agenda. They can't win
national elections if they're open about their agenda. So, they seek to
impose their policies by judicial fiat. It's time to call them on it.
And that's what many of us had hoped and expected when the president
made his nomination.

Some liberal commentators mistakenly view the passionate debate among
conservatives over the Miers nomination as a "crackup" on the right.
They are giddy about "splits" in the conservative base of the GOP. They
are predicting doom for the rest of the president's term and gloom for
Republican electoral chances in 2006. As usual, liberals don't
understand conservatives and never will.

The Miers nomination shows the strength of the conservative movement.
This is no "crackup." It's a crackdown. We conservatives are unified in
our objectives. And we are organized to advance them. The purpose of
the Miers debate is to ensure that we are doing the very best we can to
move the nation in the right direction. And when all is said and done,
we will be even stronger and more focused on our agenda and defeating
those who obstruct it, just in time for 2006 and 2008. Lest anyone
forget, for several years before the 1980 election, we had knockdown
battles within the GOP. The result: Ronald Reagan won two massive
landslides.

The real crackup has already occurred--on the left! The Democratic
Party has been hijacked by 1960s retreads like Howard Dean; billionaire
eccentrics like George Soros; and leftwing computer geeks like
Moveon.org. It nominated John Kerry, a notorious Vietnam-era antiwar
activist, as its presidential standard-bearer. Its major spokesmen are
old extremists like Ted Kennedy and new propagandists like Michael
Moore. Its great presidential hope is one of the most divisive figures
in U.S. politics, Hillary Clinton. And its favorite son is an
impeached, disbarred, held-in-contempt ex-president, Bill Clinton.

The Democratic Party today is split over the war and a host of cultural
issues, such as same-sex marriage and partial birth abortion. It wants
to raise taxes, but dares not say so. It can't decide what message to
convey to the American people or how to convey it. And even its once-
reliable allies in the big media aren't as influential in promoting the
party and its agenda as they were in the past. The new media--talk
radio, the Internet and cable TV--not only have a growing following,
but have helped expose the bias and falsehoods of the big-media, e.g.,
Dan Rather, CBS News and the forged National Guard documents. Hence,
circulation and audience is down, and dropping.

The American left is stuck trying to repeat the history of its presumed
glory years. They hope people will see Iraq as Vietnam, the entirety of
the Bush administration as Watergate and Hurricane Katrina as the Great
Depression. Beyond looking to the past for their salvation, the problem
is that they continue to deceive even themselves. None of their
comparisons are true. Meanwhile, we conservatives will continue to
focus on making history.
Mr. Limbaugh is a radio-show host. This is the latest in our occasional
series.