Posted on 10/07/2005 9:10:28 AM PDT by Sabramerican
My "Dear George" Letter
Sorry, George, but you lost me at Harriet. When a reporter asked you Oct. 4 if Harriet Miers was the most qualified possible candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court and you answered, "Yes þ I picked the best person I could find" ‹ and you did it with a straight face ‹ that was it.
I'm done. Check, please! I'm outta here.
I am no longer a George W. Bush supporter. As a conservative, I have been bitch-slapped by this man for the last time. Those suffering from "Battered Conservative's Syndrome" will no doubt make excuses and find some reason to stay with this serial abuser of our principles, but not me. I have had enough.
I've had enough of defending a "conservative" president who has spent money faster and grown government bigger than any president since LBJ. I've had enough of a "conservative" who refuses to do anything to secure our borders, and whose only plan to stop illegal immigration is to hand out temporary worker permits to create even MORE future illegals.
And George, when you look me in the eye and throw me a good old-fashioned Bill Clinton "I did not have sex with that woman" line like Harriet Miers is the most qualified person in America for the Supreme Court þ buddy, you're on your own.
It's bad enough that she's hardly conservative and has no record of achievement. Mr. President, making an affirmative-action appointment of an unqualified crony to one of the highest offices of the land is wrong, no matter what your politics. It's not just a mistake. It is shameful. You should be ashamed of yourself.
The fact that you aren't is the reason you just lost me.
Again and again, watching you throw tax dollars around like a drunken teenager at a New Orleans strip joint, I've told myself, "Stick with George, because he gets the big ones right." And the biggest of the "big ones" has always been rescuing America from an out-of-control, activist Supreme Court. You promised me a Scalia. Instead, you're sticking me with a "sistah," a woman whose qualifications for the Supreme Court begin and end in her brassiere.
She's no Scalia. She's no Thomas. She's not even a Ginsburg or a Souter. She's a joke ‹ FEMA's Michael Brown in a skirt. In fact, that's an insult to Brown, who had at least some experience as a judge, if only at horse shows.
Your nomination of Harriet Miers is an insult to the court, to conservatives and to any American who cares about competence. She's an utterly unqualified crony who has never sat on the bench, never written on constitutional issues, never been involved in a single significant issue or overseen an important case. According to you, Mr. President, she's been your attorney off and on for 10 years, and you've never once discussed the issue of abortion and the Constitution!
Good grief, my mailman and I have had that conversation.
George, you have done more than merely betray your conservative supporters. You have embarrassed us. You have made incompetence and cronyism part of the conservative character. You kept CIA director George Tenet after the worst terrorist attack in American history occurred on his watch. You kept Michael "Best In Show" Brown in a job at FEMA he was never qualified to do. And now you're giving the Dallas Library Lady a seat on the highest court in the land and telling us, "Trust me, I know she's good"?
Sorry, no dice.
Trust you? You just went on TV and told me that Harriet Miers is the most qualified person in America to sit on the Supreme Court! C'mon George, even Harriet's MOM doesn't believe that.
And now we find out that, in addition to giving campaign checks to Al Gore, Miers chaired an American Bar Association panel that recommended legalization of gay adoption and American participation in the International Criminal Court ‹ both liberal positions that you oppose. So mediocre is the Miers pick that your supporters have already fallen back to the "Don't worry, we'll probably get another pick before Bush is gone" defense.
Mr. President, if you honestly believe that Harriet Miers is the most qualified candidate, then you wouldn't be qualified to be president.
But you don't believe it, and you know it. The question is "why?" You've got 55 Republicans in the Senate, you had a dozen well-qualified conservative candidates you could have chosen from, several of them women. Why pick an incompetent crony when you held all the cards?
I fear that, when all the layers are pulled away, we will find that your answer will be "because I wanted to." You knew it would leave conservatives disappointed and despondent; you know she's a second-rate nominee at best; but in your heart you are what I've always feared you were: a Bushie, a spoiled, rich-kid president's son who has spent your life doing what you wanted whenever you wanted and making sure everyone else knows it. The more people complained about cronyism, the more determined you were to shove one down our throats.
Well, Mr. President, you've certainly made that perfectly clear. You've told my fellow conservatives and me that you don't need us. That's fine, George, because we don't need you.
I'm done. I'm off the team. I have gone from a George Bush believer who reluctantly criticized you when necessary to an avowed critic who will support your positions when I can, but not your presidency.
Harriet Miers, "The best possible nominee?" That's like saying "George W. Bush, the best possible Republican president."
What a joke.
Those whose primary qualification for the pick is that it make the democrats scream in rage are correct, under that measure she is not qualified. At least it doesn't appear to be, although I imagine by the time we get to the actual hearings her strong evangelical christian ties and work with like-minded organizations are going to lead to a very "interesting" battle.
A lot of conservatives wanted the fight. They wanted the nuclear option to get rid of the filibuster. I wanted that as well, but figured when it came down to it the democrats wouldn't take that chance, and enough republicans like the filibuster to nuke the nuke.
The "we didn't get a fight" crowd are done. Meaning they are right, and probably nothing Harriet does will change that. But I have to think they are a minority of conservatives.
I know that I am more interested in getting scrict constructionists on the bench than I am in picking fights.
Opus-A-palooooooza!!!!
Life might be a flip of the coin, but a Supreme Court nomination should not be, and certain need not be given the slate of candidates publicly discussed.
'Flip of the coin' is about as bad a defense of a Supreme Court nominee as 'mediocrity deserves representation'. I do not bet the farm on a 50-50 bet. Give Harriet a turn at traffic court to see how she works out first.
We don't need the real left wingers to accept this, unless you are thinking all 45 Dems are real left wingers. And we aren't talking about a 'real right winger' candidate, we are talking about a believer in interpreting the law as it was written, which some moderates can handle.
Personally, I'd think it a killer argument for the nominee ask the Senators 'Just how long before the Court gets to reinterpret that law you passed last week?' If we aren't to use original intent for laws written 200 years ago, how about for laws written 100 years ago? 50 years ago? 10 years ago? yesterday?
Bush has appointed somebody with more political than legal background which is a great mistake for an institution that should stay out of politics. He has just further politicized the Supreme Court, which is in direct conflict with his claim that he would appoint someone in the mold of Scalia or Thomas.
you know why that message is leaking out there? because it is REALITY-- in a Senate that is not sufficiently conservative to get an openly hard core conservative past. And you know what? I think that conservative jurists are probably able to figure that reality out on their own. Did you read Thomas Sowell on Harriet?
For the rest of us, she is a stealth nominee. Not since The Invisible Man has there been so much stealth. That's not ideal by a long shot. But ideal was probably never in the cards, given the weak sisters among the Republicans' Senate "majority
The more help we have the faster we can go. Check out americafirstparty.org. It may be the answer you are looking for.
Ravenstar
You are exactly right. Anyone who has decided that since she is not a judge she is unqualified for SCOTUS has also decided that the Constitution is indeed a living document because no where is it written that she must be. It is simply the way things have gone LATELY.
Yes, I agree. And in fact sometimes that will mean a democrat will win. But that means next election there won't be a republican incumbent, and the party may remember how they lost before and throw their support behind a good conservative.
John (The Traitor) McCain would clearly go public against a Janice Rogers Brown. He won't go against Miers even if he thinks she is a closet conservative because he would have no evidence to support that theory and end up with egg on his face.
As for why these Rinos exist, it is unfortunate but in the Northeast, we either get Rinos, or Democrats. Real conservatives are tarred and feathered in the primaries.
We have to live with that and either bolster the South, the Southwest, and the Midwest with real conservatives. Getting rid of Rinos in the short term would only make us a minority.
You might consider another view: Stop Whining – Right Choices and the Courts >/a>
Further, Miers brings to the Court skills and experience that should not be dismissed so blithely by the intelligentsia. In addition to the flashier constitutional issues, the Supreme Court docket includes more than a few cases affecting the business world. Many past decisions sent the law dramatically off kilter in ways that undermine our economy and sap our national wealth. Antitrust cases on tying and cases at the intersection of intellectual property and competition law, for example, have had enormous impact on American business. Some have created difficulties for business, and indirectly for consumers, because the justices simply didn’t understand the practical implications of their decisions.
There are some who have articulated that point well, that it is Bush they are mad at for PICKING her.
But then others mostly argue how incompetent and unqualified she is, making it all about her, and not about his pick.
Bush has appointed somebody with more political than legal background which is a great mistake for an institution that should stay out of politics.
Since Rehnquist was a politician I hope you'll see the error of this statement.
Is it idealogical conservatives on one side and neo-conservatives on the other? I'm still trying to find a pattern.
I second that thought!
That's cause you lazy Northeastern conservatives aren't pulling your weight ;-)
Agreed. It's not the number of Republican Senators, it's the quality of the Senators that is killing us. We must get better Republican Senators. This from a Californian....Sigh.
Oh, well, I must admit I hadn't thought about how wonderful having the syphillis could be. Keeping in mind, it kills you in the end and it's not too cool while it's waiting.
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