More on John "Attack the Judges" Cornyn

Whew, the man from the Southwest has really gotten the left-wing bloggers up in arms.

Like me, B & B blog and Rhetoric & Rhythm live in the Senator's constituency. The former is planning to raise the issue with the local newspaper, the San Antonio Express-News, who still haven't caught up with the story. The latter has some personal experience of Cornyn, saying "I have interviewed Cornyn on a number of occasions back when he was running for attorney general and he always struck me as a fairly level-headed, main-stream conservative Republican."

R&R comes to the conclusion that :

Cornyn is a Republican tool, a team-player and he is simply following the playbook given to him by the Republican leadership. And the game afoot is coming up with a new boogey man for the mid-term elections in 2006.

The Republicans need a boogey man to run against that will distract their sheep-like followers from focusing on how they have run the economy into the ground, piled up sky-high deficits and left us with a foreign policy mess that will take generations to deal with.

In the past they were able to target a Democratic-controlled House or Senate whom they could blame for high taxes or for being soft-on-communism. For the 2002 mid-term elections they had the spectre of Saddam Hussein and his arsenal of WMDs with which to scare voters with.

Today they are casting about desperately for a new boogeyman to run against and they think they have finally found one (thanks to Terri Schiavo) in the federal and state judiciary.

The only problem, however, is that Tom DeLay and his minions keep coming across as being much scarier than any of these judges they are attempting to vilify. Can Sen. Cornyn’s shrill attacks change this? That is the real question.

R&R also has a good round-up of other blogs taking Cornyn to task for his comment, which is at best incredibly misguided and dangerous and at worst weasel-worded treason.

Oliver Willis points out that far from always being a reasonable fellow, Cornyn supported the segregationist Wallace in the 1968 election. Wallace infamously said:

"In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever."

Willis points the "striking similarities between the complaints of "judicial tyranny" today and the arguments of segregationists in our recent past. And their supporters, like John Cornyn."

Oh, and in response to the questioner in OW's comments - yes, every politician with a bigoted sectarian or segregationist past should resign, whether Dem or Republican. It's about time this country cleared House.

UPDATE 6thAPRIL Harkonnendog, in comments, drew my attention to this Instapundit piece. It seems that Cornyn is saying he was taken out of context (Ha!) and says:

I want to make one thing clear: I'm not aware of any evidence whatsoever linking recent acts of courthouse violence to the various controversial rulings that have captured the nation’s attention in recent years.

Glenn Reynolds makes the obvious leap of logic - So why did Cornyn say anything suggesting such was the case in the first place? He got caught with his pants down while getting over-zealous in pushing the party petulance over Schiavo and is trying to flip-flop like crazy. Can I nominate Senator Cornyn for "Weasel of the Year"?