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E --
Yup -- I think both sides are absolutely going into overdrive to frame the court fight -- both sides are preemptively laying out the other sides argument in extremis and then are pillorying them for extremism. I don't know if a prolonged senate fight would be good for Bush. I'm pretty certain it would not be. I am even more certain that it would not be good for America. But that it would be bad does not necessarily mean that either side should have to yield to prevent a fight if they honestly believe a candidate is bad/good.
dc
rove seems hell-bent on pandering to the far right, and to his credit, this strategy seems to have suited his team well. i don't pretend to understand perfectly the dynamics involved, but don't see why they would be sufficiently different to now backfire with a view to 2006. perhaps i'm off, but i interpret your post to imply that fighting with the senate is politically costly - but i thought doing so actually helped rather than hurt clinton (at least his personal popularity) when he could accuse the GOP-controlled congress of shutting down the government in the 90s. i think it has more to do with how the issue is framed.
actually i think it has everything to do with how the issue is framed.
E --
I guess part of the equation will be how much "advise" is part of advise and consent. If Bush were to choose a Senator, he might do ok with confirmation, realizing that the Senate would have a hard time holding up or eating one of its own. POr if he goes with someone from Reid's list. But the conservative right is going to have something to say about that. We'll soon see which constituency is more important to Bush, the far right or the moderate right, as well as how much Bush wants to decide that the next three years will be nothing but fighting -- and if he does that, he may want to keep in mind that the GOP will likely lose seats in the 2006 elections.
dc
in its implications, but not unpredictable given her comments in the aftermath of the 2000 pre-selection election. ideally the next nominee will be just as much an ideological wild card, but i doubt very much this administration will ever allow for THAT. the most good that could be done, however, is someone who doesn't see the world in a simplistic "conservative"-"liberal" duality, maybe a true libertarian or someone similarly disinclined to seeing the law through the prism of a politically american worldview. fat chance of that, though, either -