Here we go again. We have the plain meaning of the law: “In the event of a vacancy, howsoever caused, among candidates nominated at primaries, which vacancy shall occur not later than the 51st day before the general election.” And we have the desire of one party to get around the plain meaning of the law, by appealing to the Courts. I’m indebted to Jonathan Adler for filling me in on the slender reed whereby New Jersey’s Supreme Court got to put Frank Lautenberg’s name on the ballot. It’s Catania v. Haberle 588 A.2d 374 (1990), where the Court ruled that “providing the public with a choice between candidates is one of the most important objectives of our election laws.” The small print: “[t]he general rule applied to the interpretation of our election laws is that absent some public interest sufficiently strong to permit the conclusion that the Legislature intended strict enforcement, statutes providing requirements for a candidate’s name to appear on the ballot will not be construed so as to deprive the voters of the opportunity to make a choice.” On these grounds, the Court ruled that if voters went into a polling station and found Torricelli’s name still on the ballot, and no other Democrat’s, they would have no reasonable choice. I have two obvious problems with this. The first is the reason for Torricelli’s absence. He didn’t withdraw because he was sick, or because he had a change of heart, or because of family reasons. He withdrew entirely because he couldn’t win. More accurately, he withdrew because his loss would ensure his party might not win. So this absence on the ballot has been deliberately contrived by one of the parties for reasons that are far larger even than New Jersey. By acceding to it, the Court seems to me to have invited any number of possible future abuses by either party: if you’re losing, withdraw and get a new candidate. Imagine if every election cycle, the national parties get to yank one or two candidates from around the country at the last minute if they think it will give them an edge. The result would be many opportunities for chicanery, chaos and confusion.
MAJOR PARTY PRIVILEGE: My second objection is equally obvious: there is still a choice without the Torch. There are other minor party candidates for whom non-Forrester supporters could vote. And there’s a write-in possibility that could be used by the Democrats. The Court ruling seems to me to assume that the only valid choice is between Democrats and Republicans as printed on a ballot, a preposterous idea that insults other parties, other views and the voters’ intelligence. At the same time, I’m not sure it’s wise for the GOP to take this legal battle further. The decay of judicial reasoning that this ruling again shows cannot be rectified by going to the Supreme Court, which has been damaged enough by being dragged into partisan disputes. Forrester should instead make this a part of his election message: an end to the abuse of judicial authority, and the ruthlessness of the Democrats in trying to keep power even if it means bending the law. Besides, the Democrats are already about to pounce on any Supreme Court ruling that might go against them by using it to whip up the hysteria among minorities that they exploited in Florida. I trust the voters of New Jersey to see what the game is here. They should vote for Forrester, if that’s what they want, for the same reason now as before: to punish those who break or twist the law for the pursuit of power. That should be the principled Republican position: take it to the voters. And let the Court’s expansive reasoning discredit itself.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “[M]y disagreement with the peace-at-any-price men, the ultrapacifists, is not in the least because they favor peace. I object to them, first, because they have proved themselves futile and impotent in working for peace, and second, because they commit what is not merely the capital error but the crime against morality of failing to uphold righteousness as the all-important end toward which we should strive … I have as little sympathy for them as they have for the men who deify mere brutal force, who insist that power justifies wrongdoing, and who declare that there is no such thing as international morality. But the ultra-pacifists really play into the hands of these men. To condemn equally might which backs right and might which overthrows right is to render positive service to wrong-doers … To denounce the nation that wages war in self-defense, or from a generous desire to relieve the oppressed, in the same terms in which we denounce war waged in a spirit of greed or wanton folly stands on a par with denouncing equally a murderer and the policeman who, at peril of his life and by force of arms, arrests the murderer. In each case the denunciation denotes not loftiness of soul but weakness both of mind and morals.” – Theodore Roosevelt, anticipating Jim McDermott, from TR’s “America and the World War.” (With thanks to an alert reader.) Maybe Barbra should read the book.
BEGALA APOLOGIZES: Paul Begala has now changed his views on Paul Krugman. Last Friday, he said on Crossfire, when challenged about Krugman’s citation of an alleged email from Army secretary Thomas White: “Well, you ask me to judge the credibility between Paul Krugman, a professor of economics at Princeton and a distinguished columnist for “The New York Times,” and Thomas White, an executive for disgraced Enron, I know who I’m going with.” Last night, Begala changed his tune: “I’m very sorry if I cited something that turns out to be factually false.” So Salon has come clean – honorably. Even Paul Begala has come clean. But Krugman is still silent. Notice that what matters here is not whether the email is genuine. I have no idea. What matters is whether a responsible journalist can know or can ever have known whether it’s genuine. Paul Krugman didn’t know. He published anyway – a column that was far less measured, careful and circumspect than Salon’s. He called Thomas White an “evildoer” on those grounds. I think that merits unimpeachable evidence, don’t you?
PAGING DR FREUD: “When the Prime Minister spoke yesterday I thought to myself, “I hope I’ll be able to give a speech like that when I grow up” – Bill Clinton, at the Labour Party Conference yesterday.
MUST-READ: I think Mark Steyn has really surpassed himself this time:
The Administration doesn’t need to “politicize” the war. They’re for it. So are the American people. The Democrats have had since the liberation of Kabul 10 months ago to work out a viable position. Instead, they seem to have run the various options past the focus-groups, identified the half-dozen least popular, and plumped for all of them.
Check it out.
The Dish 