Posted on 10/17/2005 3:17:09 PM PDT by Map Kernow
Harriet Miers’s confirmation hearings are about to begin, so we may be on the verge of learning something meaningful about the president’s choice to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. Or maybe we won’t. We haven’t learned much since she was named, and one suspects there might not be all that much more out there.
I don’t know enough about Ms. Miers even to guess at her qualifications for the job to which she has been appointed. I’ve heard good and bad things about her from those who’ve dealt with her, and I’ve read reams of opinion about her, but I still have to count myself as skeptical, as nothing I’ve heard thus far even begins to convince me that she belongs on the Supreme Court.
The case for Miers is simple. The president knows her and likes her. She’s a hard worker and a woman who did well as a lawyer in Texas, is devoted to the president and has performed loyally as a White House staffer. Oh, and there is one other thing. Ms. Miers regularly attends church and apparently takes her religion seriously. This, according to White House arm twisters, tells us that she would vote on the court in a way that would please social and religious conservatives.
In fact, it tells us no such thing.
It’s nice to know that Ms. Miers is a regular church-goer, and nicer still that she is devout, but we have been told time and again by the same people selling her candidacy today that a nominee’s religious views need not shape his or her judicial decisions. When liberals questioned whether John Roberts would, as a Catholic, be able to decide cases involving abortion and euthanasia without being unduly influenced by the views of his church, they were assured in no uncertain terms that his views of the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court, rather than his personal religious views, would prove determinative in such cases.
They were right then and wrong now. One can find devout liberals and conservatives sitting side by side in pews every Sunday. As a practical matter, while it is true that regular attendance may, as numerous polls suggest, indicate a greater statistical likelihood that one will vote Republican, such attendance tells us little about any individual attendee’s politics and absolutely nothing about how Harriet Miers might vote on cases that come before her as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
When a Supreme Court justice looks at a case, conservatives and most other Americans would hope that he or she would ask how the Founders might have viewed it in light of the meaning of document they crafted rather than how their minister, priest or the president who appointed them might want it to turn out. We don’t know how Harriet Miers views the Constitution or the role of a Supreme Court justice, and most of us are waiting to find out.
Still, I have from the beginning been willing to grant that, since few of us know much about the lady, she may be all the president and his advisers claim. She is, after all, a smart woman and a fairly successful lawyer who may well have thought deeply, though privately, about constitutional questions in spite of the rather mundane chores for which she’s billed her clients over the years, but it is going to be up to her to demonstrate it.
What is most troubling about this whole affair, however, is the way the administration has gone about trying to demonize conservatives who have raised questions about Ms. Miers. It began from day one to attack personally the motives, loyalty and judgment of anyone who questioned the wisdom of the nomination. Since then, the ad hominem attacks on Miers’s conservative critics have been unconscionably heavy-handed and will haunt the president regardless of how the nomination fight turns out.
Most conservatives have stood with Bush from the beginning. Those of us who know him like him. We’ve swallowed policies we might otherwise have objected to because we’ve believed that he and those around him are themselves conservatives trying to do the right thing against sometimes terrible odds. We’ve been there for him because we’ve considered ourselves part of his team.
No more.
From now on, this administration will find it difficult to muster support on the right without explaining why it should be forthcoming. The days of the blank check have ended because no thinking conservative really wants to be part of a team that requires marching in lock step without question or thought, even if it is headed by the president of the United States.
It's going to be a long three years to the end of this term.
If we can't give the President the benefit of the doubt long enough to hear what she has to say at the hearings, how can we expect the rest of the country to give him the benfit of the doubt about anything.
If you read Craig Shirley's account of RR's 76 campaign, you see that the author was a major player in key states, esp North Carolina.
David Keene has been around a long time and is a true conservative. I put some stock in what he says.
If he came out for Miers, I would take that seriously.
As it happens, he is not for her...and I think that should be taken seriously also, at least from fellow conservatives.
But...as will likely happen...this thread will soon be filled up with folks calling David Keene a stooge of DU, a know nothing, a hate filled vitriolic, knee jerk Bush hating idiot, etc., blah blah blah.
"If we can't give the President the benefit of the doubt long enough to hear what she has to say at the hearings, how can we expect the rest of the country to give him the benfit of the doubt about anything."
The rest of the country already DOESN'T give the President the benefit of the doubt on much. This is not an enormously popular President, sailing high in the polls, etc.
The people who DID give him the benefit of the doubt, the social conservatives...us...have just gotten the back of the hand (again and again) from the President and his team, because he made a damn-fool pick and we told him so.
Rather than pulling back when he saw what was happening - as he DID rapidly in the Schiavo case - he's going to go to the mat, WITH US, because we are the only people who were left in his cheering section.
So, now we're the ones getting beaten up and threatened.
But that doesn't work. As politicians, they can't do DIDDLY SQUAT to us individually. They've got no REAL power. But we can take their jobs away, not just by actively working against them, but also through simple INDIFFERENCE. A priest who screams at his congregation too much ends up having an empty church, and eventually the diocese closes it down. A politician who goes after his own base ends up without a base, and the other politicians who follow him end up going off the cliff like lemmings, because they lose the base too...and end up in civilian life with the political opposition wearing the crown.
The Republicans got REAL GOOD at turning on the attack machine. And it worked, against Democrats, and against RINOs. But the only REASON it worked, the REASON Bush's "stand tough" attitude was successful, was because it pleased THE BASE. WE were the "peanut gallery" that was cheering him and and giving him power. You come after US with that rubber truncheon that's worked so well on Dems and RINOs, and you end up with no peanut gallery...and not voters...and no power. And then you go home a broken, loser politician.
And you deserve it.
President Pyrrhus needs to BACK DOWN this time.
He did it on Schiavo.
He can do it again.
And he's got to.
We've already heard what she wrote when she headed the Texas Bar. Sad but true-- she's not simply not qualified.
Is "wait till we hear what she has to say at the hearings" a way of saying "maybe something will turn up" that doesn't sound quite that helpless ? Like when a woman says "I have x years invested in this relationship" she is saying "Maybe he'll change" in a way that doesn't sound quite that helpless.
If you can come up with no credible explanation for why she deserves to be on the Supreme Court at this point, why was she chosen ? Does a boss interview everyone who sends him a resume ?
Wasn't there a meeting of the "minds" (I use that term loosely), with HM and the senator fineswine and chucky the cheese eater today? Any idea of the outcome? Did they sing her praises, or swear to run her out of DC? Inquiring minds and all that. I did hear fineswine carrying the WH mantra earlier this morning, and I'm pretty sure chucky has already as well, just been out of the loop all day. Blackbird.
ping
"Since they are doing a Do-Over on this, can we get one for some of the other things, like the failures to veto some of those gross spending pork bills? The Let's Make Friends With Fat Ted Kennedy Education Bill? The highways bill? The fat Farms bill?"
Yeah, lets get a "do over" on the prescription drug bill, CFR and the borders too!
You don't. In fact, there are many more conservatives who are willing to give Miers a hearing than actively oppose her.
So, Bush is not going to "pull back." He doesn't read polls, but, if he did, he would see that he is supported more than opposed.
He would probably interview someone whom he knew for 14 years as well as Bush knows Miers, especially if he thought she was qualified for the job.
"You make the mistake of thinking that you represent all conservatives."
Nope. I'm not "representing" anybody.
I am telling anybody who is feeling angry and helpless and who wants to listen precisely what he or she can do to directly affect politics in the future.
I've just got one vote, and I will follow my own advice. Christopher Shays here in Connecticut is a pro-abortion Republican. I've always voted for him in his squeaker elections in the past, because I was voting "For the Caucus". Not now. It only takes a few voters in Connecticut to think the same way, and that seat passes over to a Democrat. That hurts the Party that betrayed us, and it makes the point.
In politics, of course, no reversal is fatal. The Republicans will be able to pick up my vote again if they will offer someone who believes what I believe and says so.
Me acting alone is nothing.
If a million conservatives think the same way, and act the same way I suggested they should, and that I am going to act, it will determine the outcome of the next election, and inflict a disaster upon the Republican Party so woeful that the balance of power in the party will shift towards the pro-lifers and the social conservatives - because they WILL still get the votes.
I could be a barking moonbat.
But then again, I could be the canary in the coal mine.
And none of us is going to know for sure just how deeply Bush has wounded this party by this choice, and the harsh browbeating of social conservatives, until November of next year.
If you're right, and most folks feel like you, not at all and I'm just a barking moonbat.
If I'm right, and a large number of folks feel like me, the wound will be deep and the disaster clear.
It would be better not to have this fight.
It would be better for the President to withdraw the nomination.
I suspect he's as stubborn as you are.
And so am I.
Which means that we cannot avoid this train wreck now.
So, we'll find out who was right about this in 2006.
So then your one and only reason is "Bush said it, I believe it, and that settles it." ?
Can you seriously argue that a mind unashamed to publicly write junior high school level prose is qualified to be on the most elite court of this nation ?
[I]t is an argument about who leads the conservative movement and the GOP. The president does ....
Please go to HH's site to get the context and to verify HH's opinion that the President "leads the conservative movement ...."
HH is wonderful, and I wish the President would nominate him for the SC, but this is the quality of argument the Miers' supporters are throwing about, and they really do not know how deeply insulting and offensive it is. It is just as insulting as eliciting our support by saying Miers is a Christian.
The President is NOT the leader of the conservative movement. There is NO leader of the conservative movement. There never has been, not even Buckley or Reagan.
This is just more of the rah rah rah, follow the Great Leader, you are a traitor and (insert others insults) argument that the pro-Miers folks are confined to making. Oh yes ... and, "look at all those folks who support her ... shouldn't you be supporting her too?"
HH gave this nomination a B+ as soon as it came out (and btw, you will not hear Hugh refer to his grade again, because it undercuts his subsequent "arguments" which depend on ignorance as their central premise). My sense when I read that was that HH knew immediately what a flop this nomination was, and realized the need to spin, spin, spin.
Now we have the Leader argument. Truly pathetic, and truly saddening, all the way around.
We'll likely get a small indicator in next months' New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections.
If Republicans win both (and they are both dead even), that's may be some indicator of the mood of the GOP right now, especially in Republican Virginia.
Is that so? Come on, even more people on this very site oppose her than support her, according to the poll on the front page. This is bad news for him for sure.
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/poll?poll=121;results=2
The rest of the country already DOESN'T give the President the benefit of the doubt on much. This is not an enormously popular President, sailing high in the polls, etc.
And you believe the same biased Dem-skewing polling agencies that said Kerry would win the presidency?
This decision is in the hands of the U.S. Senate, which does not know Harriet Miers, and frankly, probably isn't going to press her that much.
Certainly. Some very intelligent people don't write well, or are dyslexic or something like that.
She'll have plenty of people to help her write opinions.
But she could very well be articulate in verbal speech. I've seen that combination too many times to think that it's a rarity.
A poll on FR is not scientific or representative of even what most people at FR think.
"If GWB was going to be a strong LEADER on this he would have submitted a strong conservative nominee with a long track record and been prepared to FIGHT for that nominee instead of trying to sneak another stealth nominee thru."
Suppose he had done that. How long do you think it would have been before they were actually confirmed?
Well, the reason I have always given for letting Bush get away with these questionable activities is that he needed to do it in order to get the really important things done, like making good judicial appointments. That was my bottom line.
Now that he has nominated a doubtfully conservative, undistinguished and almost unknown second-rater for the Supreme Court, it puts everything else into question too.
We all paid a lot one way or another to get to this point, and we don't appreciate getting kicked in the teeth just as the goal is within reach.
This is an excellent point.
Has this President ever fought, even once, for a specifically conservative position? And I mean it in the sense that he was a true leader, one who went up against the odds because of principle?
A good lawyer must be an EXTREMELY articulate person verbally and in writing.
Are we on the clock ? Another Souter would just sail through the Senate. Is that what you want ?
We wouldn't want to waste your time, now would we ?
And the party blames the voter after the fact. The GOP lost in 1992, not becuase of Ross Perot. Perot represents a failure on the part of the GOP to attract more votes than any other party.
Anyway, what you said was well said. Don't be surprized to be called names for it. That rubber truncheon thing, you know?
I would agree with the first, but not with the second.
That's what "legal aids" are for.
Legal AIDES, not aids.
An empty Supreme Court seat is infinitely preferable to one filled by an awful justice.
"That's not the point.
An empty Supreme Court seat is infinitely preferable to one filled by an awful justice."
How would you feel about an 8 person supreme court where the next President has an immediate chance to name a justice?
What is most troubling about this whole affair, however, is the way the administration has gone about trying to demonize conservatives who have raised questions about Ms. Miers. It began from day one to attack personally the motives, loyalty and judgment of anyone who questioned the wisdom of the nomination.
no thinking conservative really wants to be part of a team that requires marching in lock step without question or thought, even if it is headed by the president of the United States.
Sandra Day O'Connor, whatever her faults-and they were maifold-was at the very least, committed to the concept of federalism.
That should be the de minimus requirement made of all Republican appointees to the federal judiciary at any level.
Do we even know that much about Miers?
I am certain that not only would she have been incapable of authoring the blistering dissent written by O'Connor in Kelo, but have the sneaking suspicion that she would have been on the other side, were she in the place of Sandra Day O'Connor.
Considering the fact that her only enthusiastic backers-aside from members of the Democratic Caucus-seem to be the corporate benefactors of the Bush administration, I find it hard to believe that she is irrevocably opposed to the exploitation of eminent domain.
Doesn't Bush get another go if we block Miers? How does blocking her mean that he gets no more chances to nominate a judge?
If a legal aide did Miers writing, did it go out the door without her approval and sign off ? So obviously this is Mier's idea of good writing.
#5
BTW, I think part of the dynamic in this Miers thing, is that the President has been so unfairly attacked by liberals and leftists, to the point of hateful absurdity, that some conservatives feel protective of him regardless of what he does.
"Doesn't Bush get another go if we block Miers? How does blocking her mean that he gets no more chances to nominate a judge?"
Well, hopefully no one is planning on actually blocking her until we hear what she has to say. But yes, he gets another chance if that happens.
Please go to HH's site to get the context and to verify HH's opinion that the President "leads the conservative movement ...."
Why lie like this?
Does he think people will believe him?
Good point.
The above statement may be the most accurate summation of the state of the party base that I have heard yet. The only improvement possible would be to add to the first sentence the additional task of winning the war on terrorism. Well stated, Cicero...
Likely not. Eminent domain is generally used by the powers that be--politicians, lawyers, and crooked businesses--against the little guy, and she has spent her whole life working for the powers that be. The usual way people like that assuage their consciences is to throw the little guy a few bones, courtesy of the taxpayers, which takes us even further from constitutional justice.
You mean if Harriet Miers loses confirmation, we get to elect a new President?
That sure changes the calculus.
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