Keeping our eye on the ball

In my list of litmus test topics for the Bush/religious right replacement for O'Connor, I mentioned consumer rights and environmental law, but several commentators would argue I missed the main threat here (serious as those other issues are)

Karl Rove's number one rule is, always play to the base. On the culture wars, that means the James Dobsonesque anti-SpongeBob, homophobic, mysogynistic theocrats.

But Matthew Yglesias reminds us that, on a whole other spectrum of issues where the players couldn't care less whether copies of the Ten Commandments get put in our courthouses, the base is the corporate lobbyists--especially but by no means exclusively in the energy, health care, and pharmaceutical industries.

And as Atrios correctly observes, it's much harder to boil down opposition to the various corporate pet issues into sound bites and bumper sticker-sized thought-units that are the ammunition with which much of the confirmation war will be fought. It's easy to counter "right to life!" with "pro-choice!", but when the issue is the ability to sue in state versus federal court on issues of product liability . . . it's tough to keep peoples' eyes from glazing over.

David Sirota takes the point even further: media obsessing over the red-state/blue-state angle will miss the real battle going on between Corporate America and ordinary Americans. "Tort reform" and "Bankruptcy reform" are only the appetizer for them. Getting the right replacement for O'Connor could open up the whole buffet.

Keeping our eye on the ball will be especially difficult this summer:

The ugly nomination/confirmation process will suck the oxygen away from coverage of the mess in Iraq, who really exposed Valerie Plame, the Downing Street Memo, the endless corruption of Tom DeLay, the nomination of John Bolton, et al.

And coverage of the culture-wars angle to the O'Connor replacement process will tend to drive the selling off of the government to Big Business off the radar screen.