There is very little evidence that Harriet Miers is a judicial conservative, and there are some warnings that she is not. Miers is said rarely to have raised her voice in the Bush administration’s internal policy debates, but it is known that she was a strong defender of racial preferences when they were being challenged before the Supreme Court. In the end, her influence helped sway the Bush administration to file a brief defending those preferences, which, in turn, helped sway the Court to uphold them.
Miers’s own career as a lawyer shows a strong tendency to identify with local elites and establishments, to go along with prevailing ideas, and to avoid doing anything that might cause unpleasantness or rock the boat. These are useful personality traits, but they are not the traits of a Scalia or a Thomas — the kind of justice this president led conservatives to expect.
“The president trusts her,” is not a good enough argument. The president has trusted a lot of people, some of whom have worked out fine, others less so. To which category will Harriet Miers belong? It is possible that the confirmation hearings will shed light on that question. But we doubt it, given the ease with which nominees can sidestep searching questions.
What, then, should be done? Some conservatives have called on the president to withdraw her nomination, and a few have urged senators to vote against her. If the president withdrew the nomination, we believe that he would seek a replacement who could unite conservatives — as he no doubt expected Miers to unite them. But that nominee would be tarnished, perhaps fatally, by the suspicion that the president was forced to pander to the Right. The president, moreover, surely does not want to risk looking less than strong and steadfast. The prudent course is for Miers to withdraw her own nomination in the interests of the president she loyally serves. The president could then start over. Both he and his party would probably benefit from having the clear fight over the direction of the courts that only a new nominee would allow. But for that to happen, some conservative senators are going to have to send a diplomatic message to the White House.
And conservatives and the White House will have to restore their working relationship. Some hard and ill-considered words have been said on both sides, but it is time for all involved to follow their interests, instead of their resentments.
David Brooks said last night that the conservative movement is an intellectual one usually in opposition to the Republicans, but that argument has mostly been silenced the last ten years. The Miers nomination reopened the traditional schism.
Krauthammer said that the committee will have problems showing how ill equipped this lady is to handle the job, because if they ask her the kinds of tough questions the average person doesn't know, the average person will be insulted and feel that Miers is being badgered.
Stamper says give me Luttig though he'd happily accept Janice Rogers Brown.
1 comment:
Rush really echoed your own sentiments, Tom. He was yelling at a pro-life caller who was diappointed in him for not "getting behind" the nomination of Myers. Rush spent 30 minutes with this woman trying to put Roe v Wade in perspective. He said he wanted a good justice who knew the law and would vote "right" on constitutional issues, not just one. She's pretty young by Justice standards and would be there for a long time. I smell another lefty in training.
Post a Comment