NARAL has just pulled an ad that went overboard in its accusations against Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. Arlen Specter, whom progressives should be courting as an ally in this and future fight regarding justices, wrote NARAL a scathing letter in protest about the piece.
John Roberts should not be given an easy pass to the Supreme Court, but those civil society players who are helping to assure our rights need to pick their battles well.
I sometimes wonder whether institutions — both on the right and the left — have to engage in battle to justify the funding they have received from donors even if the target in the battle is perhaps more reasonable than anyone expected.
We are often on auto-pilot in this society. Why did NARAL produce such an ad? Probably because it has a lot of money and needs to be highly visible pounding away on any Bush nominee, no matter who it was.
This is what Karl Rove wants. It makes progressives looks small — and worse, divides them.
We should be pushing wedge-issues on to the White House breaking away Republican moderates from fanatics.
Enough on this for now. I’m sure many of you disagree — but Roberts is the wrong fight in my view to spend all of an organization’s ad cash. Another judicial fight — more important — will be along soon.
— Steve Clemons
