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Yesterday in
the Casey Report 2, I sent around a harvest of conservative reactions to Pres. Bush’s
nomination of his White House counsel, Harriet Miers, to replace Justice O’Connor
to the Supreme Court. By itself it should pass through the mystical FW filter,
and I’ve added a blistering OpEd posted today by George Will. I thought Pat
Buchanon’s reaction was fiery enough for smoke alarms, and Wm. Kristol’s angry
charge remarkable, but Will surprised me, as if he’s been waiting four years to
cry “betrayal”. In fact, reader comments at other sites repeated that theme,
they couldn’t believe that they had “defended Bush for 4 plus years for this.” The importance
of “winning back” the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS) is the ‘Holy Grail’ of neoconservatism. kwc ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SCOTUS Watch: Harriet Miers nominated to replace O’Connor: the official versions for the woman Pres. Bush once
described as “a pit bull in size 6 shoes.” Miers Dossier http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/03/AR2005100300305.html WaPo story on Miers from June 2005 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/20/AR2005062001161.html “Legal beagle” Markos of DailyKos: The Supreme Court isn’t FEMA - Bush has nominated someone to the highest
court of the land with absolutely no judicial experience. Her academic
qualifications are unimpressive.
David "Axis of Evil" Frum wrote this about Miers. She rose to her present position by her
absolute devotion to George Bush. I mentioned last week that she told me that
the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met. To flatter on such a
scale a person must either be an unscrupulous dissembler, which Miers most
certainly is not, or a natural follower. And natural followers do not belong on the
Supreme Court of the United States. Then he deleted it. Pressure from his overlords in the White House?
Instapundit has links to conservative bloggers outraged by the decision. The emerging theme -- that the Supreme
Court isn't the place to dump political allies. I think that's something those
of us on the left and the right can agree to agree on. http://www.dailykos.com/ A sampling of the very vocal
conservation reaction, much of it aimed at Bush, not just Miers - They aren’t happy that Sen. Harry Reid likes
Miss Miers, and preapproved her selection, as Clinton used to do with GOP
leaders to assure votes: Stephen Bainbridge: I got a lot of criticism for saying that
George Bush was pissing away the conservative moment via his Iraq
policies....With this appointment, I'd echo Andrew's sentiment with something a
tad more off color: Bush
is now peeing on the movement. Pat Buchanon What is depressing here is not what the
nomination tells us of her, but what it tells us of the president who appointed
her....In picking her, Bush ran from a fight. The conservative movement has been had — and not for the
first time by a president by the name of Bush. Steve Dillard: I am done with President Bush…Can
someone--anyone--make the case for Justice Miers on the merits? David Frum: (the rest of the quote, from above): “Harriet Miers is a taut, nervous, anxious
personality. It is impossible to me to imagine that she can endure the anger
and abuse - or resist the blandishments - that transformed, say, Anthony
Kennedy into the judge he is today. Nor is it safe for the president's
conservative supporters to defer to the president's judgment and say,
"Well, he must know best." The record shows I fear that the president's judgment has
always been at its worst on personnel matters.” William Kristol: Disappointed, depressed and
demoralized, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard: “It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that Pres.
Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy.” He said
Miers’ selection “will unavoidably be judged as
reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president.” Rich Lowry: Deplorable.
"Just
talked to a very pro-Bush legal type who says he is ashamed and embarrassed
this morning. Says Miers was with an undistinguished law firm; never practiced constitutional law; never argued any big cases; never was on law review; has never written on any of the
important legal issues. Says she's not even second rate, but is third rate. Dozens and dozens of women would have been better qualified.
Says a crony at FEMA
is one thing, but on the high court is something else entirely. Her long
history of activity with ABA is not encouraging from a conservative
perspective--few
conservatives would spend their time that way. In short, he says the pick is 'deplorable.'" http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_10_02_corner-archive.asp#078320 Michelle Malkin: Bush is “stuck
on stupid” http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003661.htm John Podohertz: Glass
Half Empty.
“What we're talking about here is a lifetime appointment to the
Supreme Court that has been made in a manner that can only be considered
cavalier. Which is to say, Bush wanted to give her the job and he gave her the
job. If it could be demonstrated that the dozen or so other potential justices
were unconfirmable -- the extraordinary, courageous and principled potential
justices who have spent their careers thinking and writing and judging
Constitutional questions -- and that therefore Bush needed a stealth nominee he
could personally trust, that would be a different story. But with a
55-seat Republican majority in the Senate and the certainty that a Democratic
filibuster would kick in the "nuclear option" breaking the
filibuster, Bush did not need to go with stealth. The Roberts nomination proved
that. People are saying this was a pick made out of weakness. I
disagree. I think this was a pick made out of droit
de seigneur -- an "I am the president and this is what I
want" arrogance…At least when I make a mistake, it doesn’t
get lifetime tenure.” http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_10_02_corner-archive.asp#078320 Peter Robinson: What
people see in this is the Bush of the first debate, the Bad Bush, the peevish
rich boy who expects to get his way because it's his way. Andrew Sullivan: Boy,
does this pick remind us of who GWB is: about as arrogant a person as anyone
who has ever held his office. Now the base knows how the rest of us have felt
for close to five years. And
last but not least, Richard Viguerie,
the “Funding Father” of neoconservatism: “President Bush Blinks on Supreme Court Nominees”,
conservatives feel betrayed.
“Congratulations are due to Ralph Neas, Nan Aron, and Chuck Schumer for
going toe-to-toe with Pres, Bush and forcing him to blink,” said conservative
activist Richard A. Viguerie. “Liberals have successfully cowed Pres. Bush by
scaring him off from nominating a known conservative, strict constructionist to
the Court, leaving conservatives fearful of which direction the Court will go.” Editorial overview on
SCOTUS nominee Harriet Miers, c/o LA Time’s daily ED review: WSJ,
NYT, WaPo, Boston Globe http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-elsewhere4oct04,0,1642224.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials On PBS NewsHour, Sen. Cornyn (R-Tx)
said that some conservatives just wanted Bush to pick someone who would
generate a fight; Sen. Schumer (D-NY) says
that it’s not clear Miers will be a stealth candidate but she is not an
ideologue. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/july-dec05/senators_10-3.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Can This Nomination Be Justified? The president's
argument for Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court amounts to:
"Trust me." But should we? OpEd by George F. Will,
Washington Post, Wednesday, October 5, 2005; A23 It is not important
that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the
leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents
commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks. The president's
"argument" for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for
several reasons. He has neither the
inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing
approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such
abilities in the course of their pre-presidential careers, and this president
particularly is not disposed to such reflections. Furthermore, there is
no reason to believe that Miers's nomination resulted from the president's
careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people
had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the
reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers's name probably
would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists. In addition, the
president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the
Constitution. The forfeiture occurred March 27, 2002, when, in a private act
betokening an uneasy conscience, he signed the McCain-Feingold law expanding
government regulation of the timing, quantity and content of political speech.
The day before the 2000 Iowa caucuses he was asked -- to ensure a considered
response from him, he had been told in advance that he would be asked --
whether McCain-Feingold's core purposes are unconstitutional. He unhesitatingly
said, "I agree." Asked if he thought presidents have a duty, pursuant
to their oath to defend the Constitution, to make an independent judgment about
the constitutionality of bills and to veto those he thinks unconstitutional, he
briskly said, "I do." It is important that
Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly
is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the
court's role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a
president's choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization
for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will
prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for
fulfilling whims on behalf of friends. The wisdom of
presumptive opposition to Miers's confirmation flows from the fact that
constitutional reasoning is a talent -- a skill acquired, as intellectual
skills are, by years of practice sustained by intense interest. It is not
usually acquired in the normal course of even a fine lawyer's career. The
burden is on Miers to demonstrate such talents, and on senators to compel such
a demonstration or reject the nomination. Under the rubric of
"diversity" -- nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually
disreputable impulses -- the president announced, surely without fathoming the
implications, his belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the
idea of categorical representation. Identity politics holds that one's
essential attributes are genetic, biological, ethnic or chromosomal -- that
one's nature and understanding are decisively shaped by race, ethnicity or
gender. Categorical representation holds that the interests of a group can be
understood, empathized with and represented only by a member of that group. The crowning absurdity
of the president's wallowing in such nonsense is the obvious assumption that
the Supreme Court is, like a legislature, an institution of representation.
This from a president who, introducing Miers, deplored judges who
"legislate from the bench." Minutes after the
president announced the nomination of his friend from Texas, another Texas
friend, Robert Jordan, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, was on Fox News
proclaiming what he and, no doubt, the White House that probably enlisted him
for advocacy, considered glad and relevant tidings: Miers, Jordan said, has
been a victim. She has been, he said contentedly, "discriminated
against" because of her gender. Her victimization was
not so severe that it prevented her from becoming the first female president of
a Texas law firm as large as hers, president of the State Bar of Texas and a
senior White House official. Still, playing the victim card clarified, as much
as anything has so far done, her credentials, which are her chromosomes and
their supposedly painful consequences. For this we need a conservative president? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/04/AR2005100400954.html |
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