September
4, 2002 3:45 p.m. The
Grim Picture for Owen
It
appears that Senate Democrats are ready to kill another Bush nominee.
t
this moment, it appears Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have
decided to kill the nomination of Priscilla Owen, President Bush's choice
for a seat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. At any other time, one
might expect such a vote to be the subject of intense interest on Capitol
Hill, at the White House, and in the press. But in light of the Iraq situation,
the debate over homeland security, and the media's focus on the upcoming
anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, it is possible the
decision will attract relatively little attention.
The vote is scheduled
for Thursday morning. The committee is divided between ten Democrats and
nine Republicans, so Owen needs one Democratic vote — to go along
with unanimous GOP support — for her nomination to be sent to the
full Senate for a confirmation vote. So far, no Democrat has expressed
support for her.
"It looks very
grim," says one Hill Republican. "It doesn't look good,"
says another. "All indications are that they have the votes [to kill
the nomination]," says a third.
If she is rejected,
Owen will be just the second judge voted down by the Judiciary Committee
since 1991 (the other was Charles Pickering, another of President Bush's
nominees, voted down on a party-line vote earlier this year). Owen's will
also be, according to Senate Republicans, the first nomination ever killed
which involved a nominee who received a unanimous well-qualified rating
from the American Bar Association and who had been granted a hearing before
the Judiciary Committee.
In recent weeks,
GOP hopes for saving the Owen nomination centered on Delaware's Joseph
Biden and Wisconsin's Russell Feingold. But those hopes rested mainly
on the fact that neither senator had publicly come out against Owen. Pessimism
about Biden's vote spread among Republicans yesterday, and there is no
reason to believe that Feingold, who broke ranks with his party to support
the nomination of Attorney General John Ashcroft, will cross his party
again to vote for Owen. "Feingold was a personal friend of Ashcroft's,
and that's how we got that vote," says one Republican. "He's
not a personal friend of Priscilla Owen."
What is striking
about the Owen situation is the relative lack of public discussion or
apparent concern about the issue. There are Republicans who are outraged,
but much of the raw feeling has been kept behind closed doors. Orrin Hatch,
the ranking Republican on the committee, is said to have erupted in anger
Wednesday morning as he read the New York Times editorial, "The
Wrong Judge," recommending that Owen be defeated. Hatch was still
visibly angry a short time later when he did an interview with Pat Robertson's
Christian Broadcasting Network. But few other Republicans have brought
up the nomination in the last few days — as Democratic opposition
solidified.
In addition, there
appears to be little GOP support for an all-out fight on Owen's behalf.
"It's like our side has given up, and we don't care, and we're not
going to make any noise about it," says one Republican. "It's
just, 'Too bad, we lose.'" What makes the situation particularly
galling to some in the GOP is that Democratic opposition to Owen has been
based on relatively narrow grounds, most notably her opinions in a few
cases involving the Texas law that requires underage girls to notify their
parents before having an abortion (a law that has wide public support).
"They don't have a case against her," the Republicans says.
"She's a woman, she's unanimously well-qualified, and the only thing
they have against her is that she is with 82 percent of the American people
on the issue of parental notification."
After the defeat
of the Pickering nomination last March, a number of Republicans believed
the party had done a poor job of fighting on Pickering's behalf. There
were strategy meetings in the White House, the Senate, the Justice Department,
and elsewhere, all designed to come up with ways to ensure that such a
defeat did not happen again. Now, for all the planning and all the resolve,
it appears that next defeat is just hours away.
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this moment, it appears Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have
decided to kill the nomination of Priscilla Owen, President Bush's choice
for a seat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. At any other time, one
might expect such a vote to be the subject of intense interest on Capitol
Hill, at the White House, and in the press. But in light of the Iraq situation,
the debate over homeland security, and the media's focus on the upcoming
anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, it is possible the
decision will attract relatively little attention.
