Tom Campbell: CA's "Demon Sheep"?

FrumForum will talk to all three candidates for the GOP nomination to challenge Sen. Barbara Boxer in California. Today, an interview with Tom Campbell - the demon sheep himself!

As mentioned below, I interviewed Tom Campbell - the demon sheep himself! -  by telephone on Jan. 16. Some highlights from the conversation:

Campbell opened the interview by explaining his decision to switch from the governor’s contest to the senatorial.

Since I announced for governor in June 2008, we have had a remarkable change in the national scene. We have a new president and the greatest incursion into the private marketplace since the New Deal. I could not win in the Republican primary for governor. I heard from so many supporters, ‘You’d be a good governor, but there’s no way you can raise the money. Therefore we will not contribute to you.’ It became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But many of those same individuals pressed me: would you consider running to replace Barbara Boxer?

I have the best chance of beating Barbara Boxer. As a social moderate, I am not vulnerable to attack on that side – although no doubt Boxer will try.

I asked: If a moderate stance on social issues is such an important commitment, what does that imply for your votes on future Supreme Court nominations? Would you for example have voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor?

Campbell:

My ideal justice would have a more constrained view of the judicial role than Sotomayor. Yet on balance, I would have voted yes. The rule for a senator cannot be that you will only vote to confirm the person you would have chosen yourself, if the choice had been yours. There has to be some deference to the president.

I asked him: Do you have any sympathy for the new libertarian judicial activism – the kind of thinking sometimes described as the “constitution in exile” school?

Campbell:

I have no appetite for the court expanding its muscle to prevent the people’s will – except insofar as the constitution requires reining in such authority.” As an example of where the constitution might require such reining, he cited US v. Lopez, where the Supreme Court ruled that the Commerce Clause did not justify a federal ban on guns near schools. “I strongly supported safe schools as a state senator. Yet I cannot say that this is the federal government’s business.

Frum: Would you have any sympathy for the view that the individual mandate in the Obama healthcare plan is unconstitutional?

Campbell:

I would. The individual mandate might be such an example. It’s a stretch of the Commerce Clause to entrust this power to the federal government. A requirement to purchase is not the same as the federal taxing power.

More to come