July 20, 2005
U.S. News & World Report
What some observers have told U.S. News about the president's Supreme Court nominee:
"I would say that professionally it would be hard to find someone with better credentials than Judge Roberts. When you ask a question about whether it's a safe nomination, I don't know that anything in Washington, D.C., is safe if it's a nomination." Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee
"I expect to be spending much of August up at my farm in Vermont where I can sit in my jeans and a T-shirt, but I'll be reading all his opinions and everything that he's written." Sen. Patrick Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee
"It's a tabula rasa. It's a whole new ballgame. The Supreme Court is far different than the court of appeals. The Supreme Court makes law." Sen. Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York
"[White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl] Rove called me . . . and said, 'I think we're gonna have a fight.' . . . The danger is that this fellow turns out to be another [David] Souter because not enough is known about him. But people who know him believe him to be a solid conservative." Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation
"He's a fusion nominee, not a consensus nominee. . . . The president hit it out of the park." Manuel Miranda, chairman of the Third Branch Conference
"He exhibits a judicial temperament that social conservatives like: He knows his role is that of a judge, not a litigator." Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice
"There was a notion that we had to nominate a justice who hadn't written on the salient issues of the day because of this hostility in Washington. There was a feeling like a nominee couldn't navigate through [that hostility] if he'd written anything substantive, and it sounds like this person is a substantial person, and I like that." Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals
"We're deeply disappointed that the president didn't seize the opportunity to heal the division in the nation." Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
"The last week or two was a charade they knew where they were going in the beginning. George W. Bush was trying to get exactly what he promised the right a justice like Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia but someone who doesn't sound as radical or have a record as radical." Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way
"John Roberts has had one of the most distinguished legal careers in modern times. His nomination is a solid first step toward returning the federal judiciary to its proper role in our system." C. Boyden Gray, chairman of the Committee for Justice
"Judge Roberts is very hard to criticize." Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network
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