Ups and Downs for the Week of January 23

This is a partial transcript from "The Beltway Boys", January 28, 2006, that has been edited for clarity.

Watch "The Beltway Boys" Saturday at 6 p.m. ET and Sunday at 1 and 6 a.m. EST.

FRED BARNES, CO-HOST: Let’s check out our ups and downs.

UP: Judge Samuel Alito. His nomination to the Supreme Court is all but certain, but some Senate Democrats are threatening to drop the F-bomb – the filibuster.

MORT KONDRACKE, CO-HOST: That would be John Kerry specifically, who
is trying to outflank Hillary Clinton and Russ Feingold and win another presidential nomination by appealing to the liberal Democratic base of the party and he’s joined in this endeavor by Ted Kennedy.

But I got to say that the F-bomb strategy is bombing.

BARNES: Yes, for sure.

KONDRACKE: And, you know, the joke of it is that the John Kerry’s been conducting this campaign long distance from, of all places, Davos, Switzerland, you know, where he’s hobnobbing with the rich and famous from around the world.

BARNES: Yes.

KONDRACKE: I mean, the, he looks weak in this whole endeavor, and it obviously is not going to work. There’s not going to be a filibuster and Alito is going to be confirmed.

BARNES: You go to Davos a lot, don’t you?

KONDRACKE: I haven’t been there.

(LAUGHTER)

BARNES: Neither have I. Look, a filibuster would, would fail, even if Kerry and Kennedy tried it, because in the first place, three Democrats already said they’re going to vote for Alito. There’s Ben Nelson of Nebraska, that’s not to be confused with Bill Nelson of Florida. There is Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who’s different from Larry Bird .

(LAUGHTER)

KONDRACKE: I guess so.

BARNES: And Tim Johnson of South Dakota, who is not the same as Magic Johnson. But anyway, that’s three that are on the record they’re going to vote for Alito. And then there a number of others who said they’re going to vote against Alito, but they wouldn’t go along with a filibuster. I’m not going to name them, but Dianne Feinstein is probably the most well
known.

And then, you know what I get angry about it, this notion that a lot of these Democrats and the left-wing groups and so on that say that Alito is out of the mainstream. That would be true only if the mainstream consisted of liberal America and liberals. And it doesn’t.

You know, the mainstream goes from left to right. And, certainly every Supreme Court justice on the court now is inside that mainstream. And Alito’s a moderate conservative. He is closer to the center in this ideological spectrum, than either of the last two Democratic nominees, I think, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, really.

KONDRACKE: You consider Justice Scalia and Clarence Thomas as being mainstream?

BARNES: Sure.

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: They’re on the right side of the center, for sure.

(CROSSTALK)

KONDRACKE: They’re over there.

BARNES: No, they’re over there. But they’re, but they’re in the
mainstream.

KONDRACKE: Well, if Alito is Scalito, then he’s over there. OK.

UP: Canada’s prime minister-elect, Stephen Harper. Look for a big-time thaw in relations with our neighbors to the north now that a conservative is at the helm. Harper’s victory this week ended 13 years of Liberal Party rule.

BARNES: You know, President Bush got along extremely well on a personal basis with Paul Martin, the liberal former, now-former prime minister, until last summer, when they had an election, and what did Paul Martin do? He played the anti-American card, and just barely won.

But he tried, he played the anti-American card again in the election a few days ago, and it didn’t work at all. You know, it was stuff like, you elect Stephen Harper, which will put a smile on President Bush’s face. You know, stuff like that. And it didn’t work. And it shouldn’t have worked.

Stephen Harper, by the way, is from the red province of Alberta.

(LAUGHTER)

BARNES: And I think he’s going to get along with Bush, not in as important a relationship, but sort of the way Tony Blair gets along with Bush. I mean, they’re not chummy and all that, the way Blair and Bill Clinton were, but they really have a professional relationship where they trust each other.

I think we’re going to see that there. For sure, we’re going to see anti-Americanism pointing coming out of the Canadian government.

And lastly, I really think America’s going to finally abandon, as it should have a while ago, these restrictions on Canadian lumber coming in. I think they’ve lost four cases already, including in the World Trade Organization. They have to give it up. And the Canadians will
love it.

KONDRACKE: But it did put a smile on George Bush’s face to see Paul Martin defeated, I’m sure.

(LAUGHTER)

KONDRACKE: ... and one of his ideological kin.

BARNES: Indeed.

KONDRACKE: But, look, Canada is not going to become a red state. For one thing, Harper is running a minority government. He’s not going to cut taxes, he’s going to be tough on
crime, but he’s not going to eliminate gay marriage. And, he’s certainly not going to do away with the Canadian health system.

BARNES: DOWN: Google. While it had no problem refusing U.S. government demands to hand over search results for an anti-porn sting, it was more than happy to concede to Chinese government demands that Google censor its search engine in that company.

KONDRACKE: Well, what, what, what the...

BARNES: Mort, you’re really steamed up about this.

KONDRACKE: Well, yes, what the Justice Department wanted to do was to get Google to give lists, anonymous lists, of whose — not who, but what Web sites are being visited, in order to try to find out how frequently people go to, to porn sites, you know. Google oh-so-civil libertarian is refusing this thing. But when it comes to China, and building up in that market, China, the Chinese wants Google to censor stuff about Tiananmen Square, censor stuff about human rights violations in Tibet, and so on.

And Google went along with that. Some civil libertarians…

BARNES: They’re just following business practices. They’re in business, they’re trying. You know, you have to adjust to whatever...

BARNES: I’m being devil’s advocate Mort.

KONDRACKE: Yes, obviously it doesn’t sell to me. And, you know, if they said no, what would China do? They’d go to Yahoo, maybe. Would Yahoo cave in? I don’t think so. I hope not.

BARNES: They’d find somebody that would cave in. I mean, really, in this thing, morality-wise, of course, Google doesn’t have a leg to stand on. I just wonder what they
don’t want, I agree, they don’t want the names and the Justice Department doesn’t want the names. But I, I’m not sure what they can make out of this Google material...

KONDRACKE: They’ll find out...

BARNES: …which porn sites people are going to.

KONDRACKE: No, they want to find out how many porn sites people are going to and how frequently they’re doing it, to make the case...

BARNES: I can tell them. There are a lot of porn sites, and people go there often.

KONDRACKE: How do you know?

(LAUGHTER)

BARNES: Well, it’s a guess. But I’ll bet you agree.

KONDRACKE: Well, I guess I do agree. And I think the Justice Department ought to fight it.

BARNES: All right.

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