Inside Politics

Moral arbiters

Critics of the Supreme Court decision to declare a constitutional right to sodomy are wrong to conclude that the ruling “means the end of morals legislation,” Jonathan Cohn writes in the Los Angeles Times.

“Paradoxically, the decision confirms that morality is a viable basis for law. The court’s decision was all about morality — the justices’ morality. There is no other way to explain the result,” said Mr. Cohn, a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, a dissenter in the case.

“Looked at in that light, the court’s holding does not signal the end of morality but merely the transfer of decision-making power” from the public to the high court, the writer said.

The Democrats’ future

“Republicans are looking forward to next year’s elections with a song in their hearts and a smile on their faces,” Ramesh Ponnuru writes at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).

“They were happy when Nancy Pelosi became the leader of the House Democrats, and they are even happier about Howard Dean’s momentum in the Democratic presidential primaries. They are happy about every sign that the Democratic party is lurching leftward, since they think a left turn would create the possibility for a Republican landslide. It will be 1972 all over again.

“I have an article in the latest issue of National Review analyzing what’s behind the Dean insurgency, and what may be ahead of it. I write here to suggest that those Republicans who are conservatives ought not to be so cheery about what’s going on. Conservative and Republican interests converge quite frequently, but not entirely. The resurgence of the Democratic Left is one of the places where they don’t. It is something that would indeed help the Republican party, but not the conservative cause,” Mr. Ponnuru said.

“One of the reasons that parties benefit when the other party becomes extreme is that it allows it to hug the center. But if Republicans are moving to the center and Democrats to the left, that means both parties are moving leftward — that the center of gravity of American politics is moving leftward. Isn’t that, too, part of the story of 1972?”

Mr. Ponnuru added: “It is possible, of course, that the Democrats could suffer so massive a repudiation that conservatives would come out ahead, even given their left turn and the Republicans’ reaction to it. But it is a lot less obvious to me than people seem to assume.

“And there’s another issue. People ask me sometimes whether I’m happy about the Democrats’ current predicaments. But let’s rephrase the question. Should we be happy that one of our two major parties is going off the deep end? I don’t think so.”

Frost shrugs

Republicans in Texas released a redistricting plan Tuesday night that could increase their strength by four to seven seats in Congress.

The proposed map would move U.S. Rep. Martin Frost, a Democrat, into the overwhelmingly Republican district represented by U.S. Rep. Joe L. Barton, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

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