Pro-, Anti- Sides Poised For Future Ct. Pick($18M Progress for Am. budget)

[DeepModem Mom]

Washington Post:
Pro-, Anti- Sides Poised For Future Court Pick
Quick Response Considered Vital to Taking the Offensive

By Mike Allen and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 29, 2005; Page A03


Within a day after President Bush taps a Supreme Court nominee, a conservative group with an $18 million budget for the confirmation fight plans to be on the air with a heartwarming ad featuring vintage photos of the candidate to try to cement a sympathetic portrait.

An abortion rights group is poised to shoot a detailed e-mail to 30,000 "rapid responders" who will help generate a barrage of calls to senators and letters to editors saying the landmark Roe v. Wade decision could be in danger. About 800,000 supporters will receive a more general warning and call to arms.

These elaborate opening-day plans are the product of years of preparation and months of drills by groups that see the nomination as the most important social policy battle of the Bush presidency. The plans also reflect the conclusion by both sides that a potentially decisive advantage -- in momentum and public opinion -- can be gained or lost immediately after a White House announcement.

Both sides have prepared hour-by-hour chronologies of Supreme Court fights, ranging from the 73 days from nomination to confirmation for Justice David H. Souter in 1990 to 137 days for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993. In a calculation akin to the "golden hour," in which paramedics race to get a critically ill patient to a hospital, Senate strategists have concluded that the first four to six hours will determine which side is left on the defensive. These minutely detailed strategies are ready to be activated regardless of whom Bush nominates....

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The organization with the $18 million budget is Progress for America, a nonprofit issue advocacy group that spent $45 million on Bush's reelection campaign and has prepared a mammoth dossier on how the opposition has responded to previous Republican nominees, distilled into a "Liberal 10-Step Plan for Judicial Character Assassination." The group says its research found that liberal opponents follow predictable tactics: "Once a nominee is named, immediately announce that the nominee's record 'raises more questions than it answers.' "...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/28/AR2005062801411.html