Care to turn down the volume?
Posted on 10/29/2005 12:00:11 AM PDT by goldstategop
That the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers has been mercifully euthanized is good news. What this bizarre episode says about the "conservatism" of George W. Bush is the bad news.
Whenever someone tries to tell me about the supposed commitment to the cause of our 43rd President, my off-handed response is: "Colin Powell, Christine Todd Whitman, Alberto Gonzales, Arlen Specter (Bush supported RINO Arlen over a real Republican in last year's GOP primary), mega-deficits, Nobody's-gonna-outspend-me-on-Katrina-aid, signing the campaign-finance fraud, Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace, Ramadan fetes in the White House, an amnesty for illegal immigrants thinly disguised as a guest-worker program, didn't support a Federal Marriage Amendment until it was politically convenient, supported the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and a Palestinian state."
If Bush is a conservative, Al Franken is a deep thinker, Michael Moore is a patriot, Osama bin Laden is a Zionist, and Bill Clinton is chaste.
Look, I voted for Bush twice and wrote countless columns supporting him over Al Gore and John Kerry. Given the alternatives in the last two presidential elections, I'd vote for him again.
And, yes, I gladly acknowledge that the president has gotten some things right – the war on terrorism (with certain exceptions, most notably the Saudis, the Pakistanis and the Palestinians), some excellent nominations for the appellate courts and occasional pro-life gestures.
I'll go further and say that I believe the president is a decent man who's sincere in his faith. But a conservative he's not.
Supreme Court nominations are now a matter of life or death – life or death for unborn children, life or death for the family, and life or death for Judeo-Christian morality. Here, the president has failed us miserably. John Roberts was a mistake. Harriet Meirs was a catastrophe of abrupt-climate-change magnitude.
Mr. Bush lied to us repeatedly – through two presidential campaigns – when he promised to appoint justices like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia to the nation's highest court.
By this, it's reasonable to assume that the president did not mean justices who are either black or Italian, or justices who he thinks are strict constructionists, or candidates who we had to hope were committed to the doctrine of original intent.
The obvious implication of the President's pledge was that he'd choose Supreme Court justices who (like Scalia and Thomas when they were nominated) were an open book – nominees with a paper trail wide as a four-lane highway and long as an interstate whose record demonstrated their judicial philosophy beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Instead, we got stealth and super-stealth.
The more we learned of Meirs, the more she looked like David Souter in drag. Her lack of qualifications aside (she never served on the bench, litigated before the Supreme Court or even dealt with constitutional questions) Meirs – or her law firm – contributed to the campaigns of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. Should we check Norman Thomas' donor list?
Bush assured us that HM "will not legislate from the bench." How did he know that? Did she have an "I-won't-legislate-from-the-bench" bumper sticker on her car? Did she come to work at the White House wearing an "I-heart-original-intent" T-shirt?
Seriously, how did he know that, once she got on the Supreme Court, Miers won't "grow" into another Anthony Kennedy – because the lady who works for him told him what she knew he wanted to hear?
The President maintained he never asked Miers' opinion on Roe v Wade. Now, that I believe. I don't think the president cares enough about overturning Blackmun's monstrosity to pose such a question. In 2000, the president told us the nation wasn't ready to scrap Roe – as if the nation/people had anything to do with giving us the horror of 33 million abortions since 1973.
Forget Roe. Did the President ask Miers if she thinks there's a right to sodomy in the First Amendment, if the Establishment Clause makes "One Nation Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, if the Fifth Amendment's public-taking clause can be used to evict an 87-year-old woman from her home for a private development, if the 14th Amendment actually means what it says (that a state shall not "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" based on race), if foreign law can be used as a basis for "interpreting" the Constitution? The answer to all of the above is: Your guess is as good as the president's.
If Bush had nominated Janice Rogers Brown, Edith Jones or any of a dozen other exceptional originalists on the appellate bench, we'd know exactly what we were getting. It wouldn't be a grab bag – where we could pluck out a William Rehnquist or a Sandra Day O'Connor or a David Souter (Republican nominees all), depending entirely on luck.
But the President doesn't have the stomach for a fight with Senate Democrats, left-wing interests and a biased media. Such a battle royal would inform the American people, energize his base and set the stage for an election over real issues next year. Instead, the President's base was on suicide watch for the past month, and the Beltway-based conservative movement finally revolted.
For most conservative pundits, grass-roots groups and court-watchers on the right, Meirs was a bridge too far.
The last straw was revelations of some speeches the President's counsel gave in the early 1990s, wherein Miers declared that "self-determination" (for the woman, not the unborn child) should be the deciding factor in the abortion debate. Said she, "Legislating religion or morality we gave up on that a long time ago." Really? Who's we? This brilliant constitutional scholar doesn't understand that all legislation is morality legislation.
In a speech called "Women and Courage," Miers cited judicial Jacobin Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Hollywood airhead Barbra Streisand as examples of feminine fortitude. Someone in the White House should have checked to see if she has Emma Goldman's name inside a heart tattooed on her arm.
If the right hadn't robotically fallen in line behind John Roberts' nomination (we were told that Roberts only did a few hours of pro-bono work paving the way for Romer v. Evans, which established men who schtup other men as a protected class for civil-rights purposes), the president might have thought twice about trying to stuff Miers down our gullets.
Over the past five and a half years, the movement has swallowed so much from this administration that the public could be forgiven for thinking conservatives have turned into an auxiliary of the Republican National Committee.
I've spent many sleepless nights pondering this phenomenon. Here are the factors that have contributed to co-opting what once was an independent and vibrant movement:
1. The war on terrorism – Many conservatives consider it unpatriotic to break ranks with the president in time of war. And while Mr. Bush has made some bold moves here, he's also undercut his success by his inability to identify the Islamist roots of the conflict (terrorism is a technique, not an ideology), his choice of allies (if the Pakistanis and Saudis are our friends, we could use more enemies) and his ceaseless agitation for a Palestinian state (Genocide-istan).
2. Bamboozled by Bush rhetoric – The President is great at role-playing. The lesson Karl Rove learned from 1992 (when conservative disaffection resulted in the defeat of Bush Sr.) was: Promise them anything but give them Arpege. Thus, every now and then, Mr. Bush will talk conservative and toss a tidbit to his lapdogs on the right (pushing domestic energy development and Social Security reform or appointments like John Bolton as U.N. ambassador), but he has no real commitment to conservative principles, or even understands them, for that matter.
3. My-enemy's-enemy-is-my-friend – The left's hatred for Bush borders on the pathological. It's assumed that anyone despised by the New York Times editorial pages must be an OK guy. But the left loathed Richard Nixon – no one's idea of a conservative – ditto Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott. Has it now reached the point where liberals are allowed to define "conservative"?
4. What-choice-do-we-have? – Bush is the only game in town – the only way to get any part of our agenda through – so best we put up with his nonsense. This ignores the fact that the President needs us more than we need him. Without grass-roots conservative support, he will lose Congress next year, as he would have lost his bid for re-election last year. Bush carried Ohio with 51.25 percent of the vote. The Ohio defense of marriage amendment (which brought out hundreds of thousands of evangelical voters) passed by over 64 percent. If Bush hadn't carried the Buckeye state, Kerry would be filling Supreme Court vacancies. The conservative movement needs to declare its independence from George Bush. "W" will reside in the White House for another three years. Conservatives need to plan for a future well beyond that (which is why lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court are crucial).
I am not suggesting that conservatives become a bunch of knee-jerk Bush-bashers – rather, that we cease being blonde cheerleaders for whatever dumb move the President makes. Here are a few guidelines:
1. Never assume the President has our interests at heart.
2. Remind Bush who elected him to the Presidency twice. (Hint: It wasn't Charles Schumer or any of the other lefties currently urging Bush not to cave in to his right-wing base. At this point, a massive cave-in is advisable.)
3. Present the President with copies of the 2000 and 2004 Republican National Platforms. Suggest he study them closely.
4. With the next Supreme Court nomination, take nothing for granted.
5. Insist the President finally keep his campaign pledge to nominate a Thomas or a Scalia – not someone he thinks is a Thomas or a Scalia, not someone he tells us is a Thomas or a Scalia, but someone we immediately recognize as an intellectual clone of those distinguished jurists. (Hello, Janice Rogers Brown!)
Bush 41 had a problem with "the vision thing." It's about time "W" got "the conservative thing."
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
I'll still trust the President's moves over whatever dumb move Don Feder suggests we make.
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
A nominee with a history you would find pleasing cannot be confirmed.
By insisting on getting all you will get nothing. We were so close to winning.
Study the Senate voting records. Threats of the "nuclear option" have no teeth because there aren't the votes.
Meirs is gone.
I'd prefer to see where W goes from here.
He is going to have to rise above all this stuff and get tough at home the same way he has overseas.
I hope he does. Act like DeLay...fight like hell and stay on messages that resonate
no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater
he has three years to do a lot of good
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
Cut taxes, evicted the Taliban, killed or captured most of the top Al Qaeda leadership, cancelled the ABM treaty, cut taxes again, appointed dozens of very good federal judges, evicted Saddam, cancelled Kyoto treaty, building SDI, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Condi Rice, signed firearms manufactuer protection bill, and at least tried to reform Social Secutity.
Half full/half empty. You decide.
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
Whiners bore me.
Barbarians are at the gate.
That's the way I see it. I'm tired of pablum.
I want President Bush to nominate a strong conservative for two reasons:
First and foremost to get confirmed but secondly to expose the Republican weenies in the Senate for what they are. There were too many of President Bush's judicial nominees that were lost in a wasteland of filibusters for me to think that anything different will happen with a strong conservative nominee. Shoot, John Bolton only went to the UN because of a recess appointment after months of withering on the vine. Believe me I hope I am wrong but sometimes one has to be careful what one wishes for because we just might get it. Hariett is gone and chances are we are going to get, thankfully, a strong conservative nominee but whether or not he or she gets confirmed is entirely another matter.
Trust is a 2-way street. Bush needs to trust the conservative voters who elected him in order to be trusted himself. The nominating of stealth candidates to the highest court in the land is a slap in the face of people who believed Bush's Scalia/Thomas campaign rhetoric.
The Roberts nomination might have made sense if Democrats controlled the Senate by a lopsided margin. But that's not the case. Republicans control the Senate. If Clinton could get Ruthie on the court without hardly a whimper from Republicans, certainly Bush could've given us the clear ideological opposite. If he doesn't do so with his next and possibly final SCOTUS nominee, get ready for a disappointing 2006 Election Night and a Hillary presidency in 2009.
I myself was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt over his choice, simply because of his record of choosing top notch candidates for consideration
thanks carolyn
If Democrats attempt to filibuster an outstanding nominee like Luttig, Olson, Alito or Edith Jones by claiming it's somehow an extraordinary circumstance, I believe Republicans can muster enough RINO votes for the nuclear option.
tell me about Don Feder
Even if Arlen and Chafee jump ship, that leaves us with 53, right? And if Collins and Snowe do their little RINO dance, that gives us 51, right? And even if another Republican goes AWOL, we still have Cheney's vote, right? Plus, there are still a few Democrats in red states who are open to confirming conservative judges. It can be done, I tell you! It can be done!
STOP THE APPEASEMENT, DUBYA, and put forward a nominee we can get behind!
Two things to say about this:
1. Only rats and cowards leave the ship while the crew fights valiantly to save it.
2. This is typical of conservatives in the second term of a Republican presidency: you publicly beat the hell out of the guy you worked like sled dogs for to get elected.
This abandoning of this particular President has been a conservative theme for a few months now, and it all comes down to one thing --- Roe v. Wade hasn't been overturned yet, and dammit, that's all you wanted BUsh to do, really.
Sure, you'll take tax cuts, you'll take a stable economy after a $1 trillion hit caused by foreign terrorists, you'll take a stronger foreign policy (especially if there's bullets flying somewhere), and Bush has provided these things. But what really sticks in your craw is that Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land and abortion doctors haven't been frog-marched into the concentration camps yet. It makes you sick to know that millions of people cross our borders, and you rightly want something done about it, but not if Pedro, who cuts the grass at your local golf course, has to be arrested and deported.
This latest round of discord in the party more or less coincides with the Robert's nomination and got much worse when Harriet Miers showed up.
More and more "conservatives" are beginning to sound like democrats, in that they have only one issue (abortion) and one frequency (shrill).
Those of you who abandon this presiden-- you're hypocrites.
Those of you who threaten to leave the party, remember what you did to the Republican party in the 1990's, and if you're still thinking about leaving after that, then don't let the door hit you in the backside.
and to blow your theory away, I will give you McCain, Voinovich and DeWhiner...
effectively knocking your count down to 48....
And if it comes to that, you can bet no Dems will come to the rescue of the Right.
Yes.
But O'Conner will stay on till a replacement is confirmed.
WND really attracks the wacko element on the right ?
I'm confident all three Senators you mentioned would vote to confirm Ted Olson, Michael Luttig, Edith Jones or Samuel Alito - especially McCain, who has presidential aspirations as a GOP candidate.
All the Bushbots out there keep saying Bush has nominated numerous conservatives to appeals courts. If that's true, how many times have McCain, Voinovich or DeWine voted against those nominees? If they've voted overwhelmingly in favor of Bush's other conservative nominees - as I think they have - it's probably a safe bet they'll do so again if Bush finds the courage to actually nominate a known conservative/constructionist/originalist to the nation's highest court.
>Half full/half empty. You decide.<
More than half full!
Let's give credit where credit is due.
I have to question Don Feder's conservative credentials, because his list of Bush's sins didn't include the worst one of all: The MeddleCare Drug Giveaway.
It's OK to leave the ship if it's already settled on the ocean floor.
2. This is typical of conservatives in the second term of a Republican presidency: you publicly beat the hell out of the guy you worked like sled dogs for to get elected.
Bush has been "beating the hell" out of conservatives and the principles they stand for ever since he took office.
Roe v. Wade hasn't been overturned yet, and dammit, that's all you wanted BUsh to do, really.
Conservatives also care about silly things like domestic spending, foreign aide, illegal immigration, needless social programs, the English language, affirmative action, the NEA, PBS and - oh, yeah - the Supreme Court as it impacts Americans in all aspects of their lives, not just abortion.
It makes you sick to know that millions of people cross our borders, and you rightly want something done about it, but not if Pedro, who cuts the grass at your local golf course, has to be arrested and deported.
We'll gladly send Pedro back, too, as long as the gang bangers and drug smugglers are also apprehended.
More and more "conservatives" are beginning to sound like democrats, in that they have only one issue (abortion) and one frequency (shrill).
Even before Miers' 1993 "self-determination" speech became public, many pro-life conservatives were against the Miers nomination even though Rove and the boys were making a case that she was pro-life and Bush was wrongly injecting her evangelical credentials into the debate. If anyone was focused too much on abortion during the Miers fiasco, it was Rove and Bush.
You can count me as one anti-Miers conservative who was more concerned about law-and-order cases and the New London property case than abortion.
As far as our voices being shrill, I've never heard George Will and Charles Krauthammer being described that way. Interesting. But, hey, it appears Miers took Krauthammer's "shrill" suggestions almost verbatim when she withdrew.
Those of you who abandon this presiden-- you're hypocrites.
Oh, I see, we're the hypocrites. But the guy in the White House who calls himself a conservative isn't a hypocrite even if his veto pen still contains all of its original ink while domestic spending spirals out of control. I get it now.
Those of you who threaten to leave the party, remember what you did to the Republican party in the 1990's,...
You mean elect a Republican House and Republican Senate for the first time in many decades, LOL?
Read my lips, Bush has left the party before the refreshments were even served. Anybody who leaves the party now is just following Bush's example. But instead of walking out the left side door like Bush did, most conservatives will be walking out the right side door.
The left's hatred for Bush borders on the pathological. It's assumed that anyone despised by the New York Times editorial pages must be an OK guy. But the left loathed Richard Nixon – no one's idea of a conservative – ditto Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott. Has it now reached the point where liberals are allowed to define "conservative"?
Worth repeating, for anyone who might have missed it.
Why am I not surprised?
*prolonged eye roll*
As spending on entitlements grows it will reshape government. Discretionary programs and even entire departments will be abandoned as unaffordable. Entitlements will be trimmed but the pressure will be to cut elsewhere. The big battle will be between taxes and cuts in programs. Taxes will go up, way up, but people aren't going to be so anxious to spend tax dollars on education or Aids in Africa if it means that the government won't give them their Viagra.
IWWT. WWWD?
I agree with the more than half full. With an appropriate nomination and a complete turnaround on the border, Bush's support will be deep.
Don Feder basically suggested using your own head.
Our previous RINO is now gone, replaced by a true 'Rat. The field to now get rid of the 'Rat sems limited at the moment, but we still may get a real choice in '06.
Feder is looking backwards, not forward. It is time for conservatives to start getting serious about who we will nominate in 2008.
Shut up, Büshbot.
I'm old enough to remember the same complaints about Pres. Reagan. People have to realize that no politician is going to satisfy you 100% of the time. In many ways, Pres. Bush has been more loyal and has fought harder for the conservative cause than Reagan. Yes, his nomination of Miers was a mistake. But we've all made mistakes, and Pres. Bush has made very few. Look at the bright side. By being able to pick a new SCOTUS nominee, Pres. Bush will be able to push the Libby story to the back pages of the newspapers.
Still are. Half a dozen nominees to the Circuit Courts of Appeal ae still held up in the Senate because Senate leadership is too lily-livered to bring them up for debate and a vote. The GOP is silently ratifying the 60 vote supermajority hurdle; after much bluster that it would not.
Nonsense. That is exactly what he wants. Same as our pretend "Conservatives" on Freeper spend 100% of their time basing Bush now. Funny how they are never their to fight FOR anything. Nope just bash Bush always.
Really would be nice if the postures in the "Conservative" movement would learn what the term "Constitutional Republic" means. For people who claim to be lovers of the Constitution, they daily demonstrate a shocking lack of any sort of principled understanding of the document.
One does NOT get 100% of what they want in politics. There are not enough 100%ers to elect a dog catcher, much less a President. This temper tantrum thrown by the WND crowd anytime they do not get their way is childish. Sorry we are NOT a Dictatorship. Self chosen elites, like this WND author, do NOT get to dictate to us what we can and cannot do as Conservatives. Bush is President of ALL the people, not just the Buchannanite fridge of the Conservative Movement. This author, and others, needs to learn he is part of, not the WHOLE, of the Conservative Movement.
If the Whine all the Time crowd of 100%ers can not grasp this simple reality, I suggest they go join a 3rd party because the rest of us are NOT interested in joining their quest of political irrelevancy.
Care to turn down the volume?
Many conservatives have felt for some time that W comes up too far to the left for our liking; but he is a damn sight better than any available (to-vote-for) alternative, especially anyone that would associate themselves with rats.
Sorry you find the concept of a Consitutional Republic so difficult to understand. Sorry your 100%er views are not those of the majority of Conservatives. Sorry you don't get to dictate your political feelings to everyone around you.
They must have gotten quite a workout from kissing the asses of Gloria Feldt, Kate Michelman, Patricia Ireland, Peter Singer, among other "conservative" luminaries.
Something tells me that Jesse Helms would be ashamed of you.
Then again, that statement can probably be applied to most people.
Roberts, with his clear ability and temperament, will need time to demonstrate the soundness of choice. Miers ... what planet was Dubya on? An imagine, he might get another vacancy. What then?
Federal deficit, ..., etc. ain't good; Dubya ever heard of his veto power?
The GOP leadership will sense their "committee chairmanship" slots going bye-bye ... far too late.
As Dubya rides into the sunset, having been very stupid with his "political capital" spending ... that old and very faint cry will be heard ... "Well, we (i.e., the Grand Old Party) coulda' ...). The curtain closes and decades of frustration continue.
Simmah down now!
^____^
I've had Bush on the "Trust But Verify" list for years.
I'd settle for 90 percent. Or 80 percent. Or 70 percent.
With Bush lately, I feel like it's much less than 50 percent, which shouldn't be happening with a Republican House and Republican Senate.
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