October 27, 2005
GOP Base Plays Grinch
When President Bush appointed Harriet Miers, he gave all Democrats, and Senate Democrats in particular, a gift. With nothing in her background speaking to the towering intellect and laboriously developed judicial philosophy that a justice on the Supreme Court would need in order to resist the prevailing currents of society, Miers seemed unlikely to overturn Roe v. Wade or do anything to counteract the momentum the Lawrence v. Texas decision gave to gay rights. All Democrats had to do was hold their nose at the spectacle of such an appallingly unqualified justice and publicly praise her. It was a good deal.
Unfortunately, my former party has a special talent for failing to recognize political opportunities. The Democratic leadership went for the fleeting pleasure of taking cheap shots at a faltering President instead of thinking strategically, and as a result they now face the grim possibility that they will be helpless spectators as a truly polarizing nominee is pushed through and confirmed on a party-line vote.
To me this is shocking. The Bush administration nominated Miers to prevent a fight, and Democrats, apparently forgetting their numbers in the Senate, fought anyway. The next nominee will almost certainly be truly upsetting to those on the left.
Social conservatives should thank Harry Reid for his role in clearing Harriet Miers from the scene.
Posted by Audi Partem Alteram at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)
"Irrepressible Conflict" Dooms Miers
She's history. Administrations have confronted miserable times, and this one is no different; Miers' evaporation is the disappearance of one particularly vast and unnecessary cloud.
And as unnecessary as it was, the irrepressible conflict between the constitutional prerogatives and duties of the Senate and those of the Presidency represented a truth that Bush either knew of or should have known of when this whole process began. That failure is the only real shock, and the only real embarassment.
But Miers' withdrawal clears the air as well as the path for our new nominee, who will be, one can feel certain, better in every way. Typically one can only seize the initiative by exploiting the setbacks of one's opponents. Here we seize it back from ourselves.
Posted by James G. Poulos at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)
What now?
The AP is reporting that Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination. Let the next round begin.
UPDATE - A friend just emailed me and was exacerbated with this post, saying I sounded timid. Bush will, I think, deliver. As Tony Blankley wrote yesterday, "Seldom has a president found himself in more political trouble that he substantially has the power in his own hands to fix than does President Bush currently." Bush's next move will be a pivotal one in his second term and I happen to believe he'll seize the moment by nominating someone within spitting distance of Michael Luttig et al. As another friend emailed this morning, "Alito! Alito! Scalito!"
Posted by bill at 09:05 AM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2005
An actual judge's perspective on Harriet Miers
Earlier this month I wrote about the difficulty inherent in nominating to the Supreme Court someone whose qualifications are in the form of "practical" experience. Yesterday a federal trial judge offered his views on what "qualified" means, and thus a minority view on Harriet Miers:
the role of the litigating attorney, where it is performed as it should be, is of a very high order and is entitled to the greatest respect. There is no reason in the world why such an attorney is not qualified to step into any court, including the Supreme Court. Indeed, why wouldn't the Supreme Court benefit from this? Or from having on it any lawyer who has had a successful career of counseling on complex matters.
I wonder, though, where Miers' eight trials put her in terms of litigation experience as compared to the attorneys in Griesa's courtroom.
Posted by bill at 04:42 PM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2005
More bad news for Miers
Is the end near for the Miers debacle? As Chuck Schumer suggests perhaps Harriet Miers' problems are crystalizing, "Blanton" at Red State asks whether Hugh Hewitt's support for Miers has"jumped the shark":
Hugh's support seems to be, beyond trusting the President, based on the fact that people who know MIers say she'll be right on life, she'll have a conservative judicial philosophy, and that she is personally conservative and evangelical. This makes no sense. If Miers is personally supportive of affirmative action, Hugh believes that will not affect her judicial philosophy. But, because we're told Miers is personally conservative, Hugh believes her judicial philosophy will be just what we want. I dare not even contemplate the pains Hugh will go through to explain how personal support of affirmative action and a conservative judicial philosophy mess.
We may at last be approaching denouement, if not closure. In fact, "closure" may one day be Miers' personally but the bastardization her nomination effected on the conservative movement will linger well beyond this Bush administration, and perhaps much longer. The White House's chaotic defense of a third-tier candidate who seemed better suited to run a high school bake sale than sit on the Supreme Court - which one hopes scraped bottom when Christianity was offered in support of her jurist creds - will have rendered almost laughable a central piece of federalist constitutionalism: that a judge's personal beliefs and politics should have no bearing on decision-making, and thus fitness for the bench.
Posted by bill at 08:09 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2005
Turning the corner?
Might Harriet Miers withdraw? The Washington Times reports that a "conservative Republican with ties to the White House" told them "contingency plans" may be in the works: "White House senior staff are starting to ask outside people, saying, 'We're not discussing pulling out her nomination, but if we were to, do you have any advice as to how we should do it?'" Another "conservative leader" says, "The political people in the White House are very worried about how she will do in the hearings. I think they have finally awakened."
Posted by bill at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2005
From suck to blow
The S.S. Harriet Miers continues to leak. Captain Ed has a roundup of today's installment of bad news.
Posted by bill at 02:09 PM | Comments (0)
October 20, 2005
On HEM: "Incomplete, Insulting"
Don't miss James Poulos' take on Harriet Miers' responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee's questionnaire. He closes:
Spinning -- if HEM is even capable of such deception -- her role as Chief Legal Henchwoman to the President as separation-of-powers street cred is what we elitist intellectuals refer to as A Howler of the first rank. Pity that's the only thing first-rank about this blighted nominee.
Michelle Malkin has a round-up of reax.
Posted by bill at 11:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 19, 2005
The damage will last
Robert Bork writes about the damage President Bush's defense of Harriet Miers is inflicting on conservatives, referencing both the infighting and the kick in the teeth Miers' pick represents to originalists. As usual, Bork is dead-on. But he doesn't say what I think someone should: that in the White House's scramble to defend Miers, they've bought into a lie. Adding to the ammunition they gave to those who would slander the Federalist Society (see J. Roberts confirmation), they've now bought into the commonly held misperception that a judge's political views guide his decisionmaking. In the process the WH has compromised any effort conservatives may make, be it in 2009 or 2019, to hold the line and argue that: (1) being personally, e.g., pro-choice is not the same thing as pro-Roe; (2) a judge's political views have nothing to do with constitutional philosophy; and (3) Americans shouldn't particularly care whether a judge votes (again e.g.) pro-life.
Update: James Poulos says it best:
This is grand farce, a mountain of bollocks high enough to blot out the sun and plunge her resume into deep shadow. The "Harriet Miers" destined to be remembered (and caricatured) by history seems a poor player indeed, doomed to strut and fret her hour upon the stage.
Posted by bill at 03:09 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2005
Quote of the Day
"The only sexism involved in the Miers nomination is the administration's claim that once they decided they wanted a woman, Miers was the best they could do. Let me just say, if the top male lawyer in the country is John Roberts and the top female lawyer is Harriet Miers, we may as well stop allowing girls to go to law school."
Posted by bill at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
Bork: Miers pick is a "disaster"
Bork was interviewed by Tucker Carlson:
...it's a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you're on the court already. So that-I'm afraid she's likely to be influenced by factors, such as personal sympathies and so forth, that she shouldn't be influenced by. I don't expect that she can be, as the president says, a great justice.
But the other level is more worrisome, in a way: it's kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who've been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years. There's all kinds of people, now, on the federal bench and some in the law schools who have worked out consistent philosophies of sticking with the original principles of the Constitution. And all of those people have been overlooked. And I think one of the messages here is, don't write, don't say anything controversial before you're nominated.
Posted by bill at 08:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 06, 2005
C is for cookie...good enough for me (maybe, possibly, sometime)
In Republican circles, three views seem to have emerged regarding Harriet Miers - first, that given the absence of real proof Miers is qualified either as a jurist or a "conservative" one, Republicans should work to defeat her nomination; second is the idea (best articulated by Thomas Lifson at American Thinker) that conservatives railing against Miers are engaging in, as Lifson identifies it, "groupthink" (visual: picture 6 year olds playing soccer - everyone runs in the same direction).
Today David Broder offers support for the 'tweener view: "It's too soon to judge." Recounting his conversation with Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society Broder writes:
The first thing Leo said was that Miers's statement accepting the nomination from Bush was significant to him. "It is the responsibility of every generation to be true to the Founders' vision of the proper role of courts in our society...and to help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the laws and the Constitution," she said. "When she talked about 'the Founders' vision' and used the word 'strictly,'" Leo said, "I thought, 'Robert Bork,' "Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court pick, who was rejected by the Senate after a bitter fight. "She didn't have to go there. She could simply have said, 'Judges should not legislate from the bench.' But she chose those words."
Posted by bill at 08:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 03, 2005
Miers: Many questions
Krempasky says it best: "Mr. President, you've got some explaining to do. And please remember - we've been defending you these five years because of this moment." That's a bit of an overstatement (I've defended him in large part because he seems to believe in America, and because I agree with his policies in the Middle East, although Confirmthem may be in a different boat) but the sentiment is dead-on. Questions abound, not least of which involve Myers' campaign donations to Lloyd Bentsen and Al Gore and the vast unknown of how Miers would interpret the Constitution.
Michelle Malkin, a fair barometer for conservatives, is "utterly underwhelmed."
On the other hand, is the WH employing the strategy many (example: me) suggested it might in nominating O'Connor's replacement - i.e., nominating a lamb to the Judiciary Committe slaughter?
Posted by bill at 08:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
