Given the Democratic Party’s huge majority in the U.S. Senate, conservatives and Republicans cannot prevent President Barack Obama from appointing a replacement for the retiring Justice David Souter that will echo the Left’s unconstitutional judicial philosophy that regularly re-writes our founding documents.

All the more reason to focus on setting the stage for future nomination fights and establishing and maintaining credibility on the issue of the proper judicial philosophy expressed by Chief Justice Roberts of a justice as an “umpire”.

We must eschew the old Orrin Hatch (R-UT) mantra that since a President was elected, he gets his nominee so long as they can read and write; never smoked pot and were never discovered with a live girl or a dead boy or vice versa. That philosophy is fine when considering cabinet nominations but not for members of the third branch of government that serve for life.

The main thing the GOP needs to do is finally come up with a strategy for the confirmation hearing that can educate the public on the insidiousness of the judicial philosophy of the so-called “living constitution”. We must not confirm a nominee that gives indications that they will not uphold their oath to uphold the actual dead constitution under which the capital “L” Liberty of We the People to self govern is guaranteed.

Republican senators are elected too, and also take an oath to uphold that Constitution that grants them the right of advice and consent, and they mustn’t repeat their mistakes in affirming Clinton’s Ginsburg and Breyer.

For more than 45 years, liberal judges have been re-writing the Constitution so that during times when Democrats didn’t have super filibuster-proof majorities in Congress, the liberal agenda could be imposed oligarchically via five lawyers.

So, the Hatch strategy was inappropriate even before the Democrats smeared Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to try and keep justices off the U.S. Supreme Court that would leave the matter of self government to a center right people in their states and localities.

Even more so post-Borking, the GOP must not give up their “co-equal” status.

No, we should never stoop to defamatory smear tactics, but we must use the hearings to try and make headway is educating the public on this critical, yet difficult to explain matter of judicial abuse.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published @ Examiner.com, where all for verification links may be accessed.