Priscilla Owen and Karl Rove

Robert Novak, who is Karl Rove’s mouthpiece for strategically leaked information, has reported that President Bush met with Judge Priscilla Owens privately, giving strong evidence that she will be the President’s nominee to replace Sandra Day O’Connor.

Novak states that “Owen was considered non-controversial when Bush selected her for the Appeals Court in 2001, but a wide-ranging Democratic filibuster delayed her confirmation for four years.”

In fact, Judge Owen was anything but controversial. According to Independent Judiciary, Judge Owen is the most conservative judge on one of the most conservative Supreme Courts in the country. She has breeched ethics guidelines by deciding in favor of her campaign contributors. She supported forcing pregnant women to hear religious arguments against abortion. She refused to hold businesses liable for the damages of plaintiffs such as an abused worker, a dead teenager, and a raped woman.

But I am not truly worried about Judge Owen being nominated to the Supreme Court. Why not? Because I know how to think like Karl Rove.

If you want your nominee, John Roberts, to get through confirmation hearings with a strong approval, you need Democrats to view him as a moderate. You can make any normal conservative look like a moderate by placing him next to an activist rightist (much like how you could make a shy person seem talkative by placing him next to, say, a corpse). Enter Priscilla Owen. But how do you place her on the scene without actually nominating her (which you do not want to do)? Spread rumors of her nomination. Enter Robert Novak. And the rest is history.