Posted on 10/27/2005 10:22:22 AM PDT by RWR8189
President Bush can move forward by being bold and uniting both congressional Republicans and his political base.
THE WITHDRAWAL of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is the first step on the road to political recovery for President Bush. It gives him the opportunity to select a well-known judicial conservative for the Court vacancy, rally conservatives who opposed or were skeptical of Miers, and rebuild his political base.
Winning confirmation won't be easy. Democrats already have their story down: Bush capitulated to the far right in jettisoning Miers and his new nominee will be a right-wing extremist. My guess is Democrats will stick to this narrative no matter whom the president chooses from the roster of a dozen or more conservatives with strong credentials and deep experience in constitutional law.
But a fight would be good for Bush. Battling for a highly qualified nominee, this time with conservatives on his side, would hasten the consolidation of his base. And if he's going to accomplish anything significant in the three-plus years left in his second term, he needs his base. He'll also have Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist with him enthusiastically--and prepared to impose the "nuclear option" to shut off a Democratic filibuster if necessary.
Once a new nominee is confirmed, the next steps for Bush are fairly obvious. Some of them are set in place. The first is to champion spending cuts beyond the $35 billion he proposed to slash from his 2006 budget. The second is to hold down spending on the Katrina recovery. The good news is that Katrina funds previously appropriated are being used up at a slower pace than expected.
Then there's immigration, an issue on which the president and his base are at odds. Yet a compromise wouldn't be impossible, if Bush agreed to tougher security on the southern border with double or triple the number of border guards and conservatives agreed to lighten up on illegal immigrants already living in the United States. By avoiding harsh treatment of Mexican immigrants here, Republicans could avert a backlash from Hispanic-Americans, a voting bloc of growing importance.
Bush's strength as president is based on three things: his penchant for bold leadership, Republican control of Congress, and his political base of an overlapping group of Republicans and conservatives. To govern effectively, he needs all three.
If he has them, he'll able to overcome a major bump in the path to recovery that may occur Friday: the indictment of White House aides Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the CIA leak case.
The president got into trouble with conservatives by not being bold in picking a replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Bush wanted a woman and chose one--Miers--whom he figured wouldn't provoke a major confirmation struggle in the Senate. He sought to avoid a fight, an unusual tack for him, by not selecting a certifiable conservative such as Priscilla Owen, who is a U.S. appeals court judge.
But not only were Republican senators lukewarm (at best) on Miers, Democrats were bound to jump on her when hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee began November 7. It might have ugly.
Miers and the White House used as the excuse for withdrawal that the Senate was demanding documents from her work as presidential legal counselor and, earlier, as staff secretary and deputy chief of staff. Since these couldn't be handed over--they'd jeopardize confidentiality--she had to withdraw.
True, this was a problem. But a bigger problem was the possibility of embarrassment at the hearings for both Miers and Bush, followed by Senate rejection. Even sympathetic senators who met with Miers worried she might not be able to discuss constitutional law and specific cases with confidence and credibility. Moreover, though the president insisted she'd be a reliable judicial conservative on the high court, recent press reports of statements she'd made in the 1990s raised serious questions about that.
A week ago, senators who met with Bush at the White House said he was so adamant about sticking with Miers that he'd say no if she asked to have her nomination withdrawn. Since then, however, public support for her failed to materialize. The anti-Miers drumbeat by conservatives continued and Republican senators remained wary.
How will this affect the Supreme Court? Chances are the successor to O'Conner will now be the real thing, a justice with unequivocally conservative leanings who tilts the ideological balance of the court to the right. Whether Miers would have had the same impact we'll never know.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
Actually, I think he understands the politics of the problem.
On the one hand, the illegal alien problem is massive and must be dealt with NOW. On the other, any appearance of a pogrom will be devastating to the Republicans at the polls.
The answer is a balance between HARD enforcement at the borders with a mechanism for documentation of LEGAL immigrants, and both should be unveiled simultaneously, or there will be political hell to pay. Any solution should be crafted to avoid a gold rush of new illegals coming in to take advantage of amnesty. So amnesty of any kind has to be avoided.
AFTER the borders are secured and the mechanism for LEGAL immigration is in place, then the illegals already here can be dealt with.
Dear friend, please let's pull together and not make the assumption that there is only one kind of conservatism.
[President Bush] He'll also have Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist with him enthusiastically--and prepared to impose the "nuclear option" to shut off a Democratic filibuster if necessary. Unfortunately I gotta disagree with you Fred. Senator Frist does not have the cojones necessary to herd the Republican RINOS. Thus I fear we'll never see the passage of the Constitutional Option, which is a shame. We really do need that.
It's not going to be JRB.
Estrada would be great, but I don't think that he would put his family through another estradification.
Do you recall that the charge was made that Miguel Estrada said only what his white masters told him? That is pretty foul to have to listen to without the benefit of support from Republicans.
"I'll once again make my darkhorse pitch for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott"
That would be AWESOME. Can't say I expect it, though.
Fred Barnes is on target!
Freddy "the Beatle" Barnes left out one thing. One Very important thing.
The rejection of Miers by conservatives, makes McAnus, and Grahams position as members of the Gang of 14 untenable if McAnus has Presidential Aspirations, and W only needs two to go Nukular.
See Above.
Looks like Fred still doesn't get it when it comes to illegal immigration.
Fred Barnes is a raging mediocrity. On Fox he was cluelessly sanguine and pollyannish on the Miers nomination. Obviously he is out of touch with conservatives. His columns reflect conventional conservative Georgetown babble and are not with the pixels on your monitor.
Then there's immigration, an issue on which the president and his base are at odds. Yet a compromise wouldn't be impossible, if Bush agreed to tougher security on the southern border with double or triple the number of border guards and conservatives agreed to lighten up on illegal immigrants already living in the United States. By avoiding harsh treatment of Mexican immigrants here, Republicans could avert a backlash from Hispanic-Americans, a voting bloc of growing importance.
You must feel that your stance is incredibly weak if you have to resort to misrepresenting the other side.
saveliberty wrote: "Dear friend, please let's pull together and not make the assumption that there is only one kind of conservatism."
With all due respect, what do you mean? Are you claiming the RINOs are just different kinds of conservatives? The Republican Party needs to accept people with different views, of course, but it still has to stand for something. I think the "extreme right wing" would be more willing to compromise if the Republican leadership gave us a bit more than lip service. Show me action, not talk! Let's see them reduce and/or restrain the federal beast in some tangible way, and then we can come together.
If I understand the withdrawl reasons right, then this effectively nukes Alberto Gonzolez, too, as a potenital high court nominee. A two-fer.
I agree with everything Barnes wrote. I just hope Pres. Bush is smart enough to go this course.
[[Estrada would be great, but I don't think that he would put his family through another estradification.]]
That is why I said he would need assurances of strong, active support that would counter attacks. I think that and an appeal to his sense of love of country.
[[Do you recall that the charge was made that Miguel Estrada said only what his white masters told him? That is pretty foul to have to listen to without the benefit of support from Republicans.]]
I recall that well, but the SCOTUS confirmation process is much more visible and under closer scrutiny. And those judicial memos would take a lot of fire power away from the democrats. Painting the democrats as beholding to, and manipulated by, special interests, instead of serving the people, would be a powerful weapon, one they would want to avoid with the 2006 elections just around the corner. I think they would have their hands tied with an Estrada nomination.
Yes, Rush has been saying this.
It's noteable because Fred has been mischaracterizing the opposition to this nomination from the start. From the strength of it to the reasons for it. Seems he's been forced to come closer to the reality of the situation now that the nomination has been withdrawn.
good point!
>>>>I'll once again make my darkhorse pitch for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. The left would look like the bullies they are trying to beat up a man in a wheelchair.
Nothing against him, but I don't think the next nominee should be a Texan after this last Texan "crony" didn't make it. I think it makes it too easy for the dems to call him a crony again.
patent
"Nothing against him, but I don't think the next nominee should be a Texan after this last Texan "crony" didn't make it. I think it makes it too easy for the dems to call him a crony again. "
This is all hypothetical, obviously, and I doubt if GWB will go there...but...that said, Abbott is a completely different caliber of nominee than whats her name. He is very qualified, very smart, very politically savvy, very telegenic. And he's never worked for Bush. So yeah he's a Texan, but it's not like he has tied his destiny to Bush. I think if the D's did the crony thing, it would fall flat. If I were strategizing for the Dems, I would try to come up with a different talking point. The only thing they can argue against Abbott is that he's an extremist and would overrule RvW. That's there only hope and since they are going to do that anyway, then, we ought to put up a candidate who is solid on other fronts.
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