Benjamin Wittes Quotes
The core constituency that Republicans must satisfy in high court nominations is the party's social conservative base, which fundamentally cares about issues, not diversity, and has accepted white men who practice the judging it admires.
Wittes, Benjamin. Confirmation Wars: Preserving Independent Courts in Angry Times. Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.
In 2010 there was a very conservative populist movement that not only took a very right wing position for traditional Republicans, but attracted many of the racists, Nazis, and extreme fringe movements that embarrassed many of the Tea Party members who, because it was a movement and not a disciplined party hierarchy, claimed that they could not be responsible for the hateful signs and slogans of a minority of people who would show up at a Tea Party rally. At the same time, the Tea Party endorsed some candidates who were not very well vetted and were so extreme or quirky (one had been into witchcraft) that orthodox Republicans didn’t want to be associated with them. The moderate Republicans especially were placed in an awkward position as some of the Tea Party candidates unseated incumbent Republicans in primary elections and then some made very weak candidates in the general elections while others were more successful. Palin, already at the populist and quirky wing of the Republican Party warned and threatened the moderates.
Benjamin Wittes is an American legal journalist and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he is the Research Director in Public Law, and Co-Director of the Harvard Law School–Brookings Project on Law and Security. He works principally on issues related to American law and national security. Along with Robert M. Chesney and Jack Goldsmith, Wittes cofounded the Lawfare Blog. Wittes is also a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law. Wittes is a frequent speaker on topics of detention, interrogation, and national security, before academic, government, policy, and military audiences. He also co-hosts the Rational Security podcast.
