Yesterday in the Casey Report 2, I sent
around a harvest of conservative reactions to Pres. Bushs nomination of his
White House counsel, Harriet Miers, to replace Justice OConnor to the Supreme
Court. By itself it should pass through the mystical FW filter, and Ive added
a blistering OpEd posted today by George Will.
I thought Pat Buchanons reaction was fiery
enough for smoke alarms, and Wm. Kristols angry charge remarkable, but Will
surprised me, as if hes been waiting four years to cry betrayal. In fact,
reader comments at other sites repeated that theme, they couldnt 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 OConnor: 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 isnt 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
arent 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 doesnt 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.
Pres. Bush
desperately needed to have an ideological fight with the Left to redefine
himself and re-energize his political base, which is in shock and dismay over
his big government policies, Viguerie added. With their lack of strong,
identifiable records, Pres. Bushs choices for Supreme Court nominees seem
designed more to avoid a fight with the extreme Left than to appeal to his
conservative base
Conservatives
are also exceedingly disappointed in the GOP Leadership in Congress as well.
Conservatives will now begin to seriously consider why they should continue to
give their support money, labor, and votes to Republican politicians who
take their conservative base for granted by continually lying to
them.
Editorial overview on SCOTUS nominee
Harriet Miers, c/o LA
Times 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 its 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
Senators
beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers
should be guided by three rules. First, it is not important that she be
confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the
presumption -- perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting -- should
be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion
to which senatorial deference is due.
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
