Posted on 10/08/2005 9:52:18 AM PDT by Allen H
Thank you. 8)
Over the years, you're one of the people who give me pause if we disagree, mainly because you're always so damn fair......LOL.
And you might have loved it, but I'm catching flack for it; of course, the facts back up that assertion, so I'm not worried!
Because she is a Christian conservative.
And not once, not one little bit, did your post criticize Miers as a person or potentially outstanding jurist. It criticized the stealth, and the message that George Bush is using to defend the pick.
Good post, and in the spirit of the Federalist Society, I hope somebody steps up and rebuts it in a substantive way.
I won't, but that's because I agree with your analysis.
Tactically, I think it would have been better to nominate a known conservative. The reason is that the dems now get to sit back and watch our infighting. I would rather have dems be on the defensive trying to destroy a just nomination than have republicans on both the offense and defense at the same time. No matter how Miers turns out, we have lost something by choosing to avoid the fight.
Every high school has a bully that feeds on others' willingness to get along and try to achieve their ends without a brutal confrontation. If it is utterly impossible to win, the smart man avoids the fight. But if it is possible or even likely to win, only a fool avoids destroying his enemy. Liberals will continue to come back and bite our heels until they are destroyed as an ideology. Admitting their strength and making decisions based on their strength, while appearing to be embarrassed to be a conservative, only lends the enemy credibility.
I don't see how President Bush can ever expect to tow a conservative line again during the remainder of his presidency. He has all but admitted that conservatives will lose any fight they enter. He has ceded the high ground to the dems by choosing to avoid the confrontation.
By the way, it doesn't matter if Miers turns out to be great. Bush has avoided giving a political ass whooping to the dems--a whooping that has been long over due. It would have made more sense to put them on the defensive, spewing their bigoted garbage. Conservatives only win, in the long run, by exposing dems and their vile ugliness while providing a clear picture of a better way to do things. This better way is CONSERVATISM, but to have any power it has to be named. This nomination spares us the dems ugliness, and foisters upon us our own. This is a big PR blunder. Every time the dems have Wellstone memorial incident, we gain in strength. This is another attempt by the president to rehabilitate his enemy, and is pure stupidity.
Yep.
Like the Republican majority backed Bush and the military in allowing them to decide how best to interrogate terrorist captives last week? Yeah that worked well. 2/3rds of the Republicans FOLDED! The Republican Senate Majority has LONG been proven to be spineless and withtheir own agenda that is more secular moderate/conservative compared to the House, which is more firmly Conservative/Christian in the majority of it's votes. If the House decided SC Justices, I think Bush would have put up a Luddig or Jones. But when you have a bunch of jellyfish as your fighters, you do what you can to get the best result possible. I think when some democrats came out saying nice things about her before the nomination, Bush jumped at the chance to put her up knowing the kind of Justice she'd be.
Thank you, your comment means a lot to me.
The problem is not Bush. The problem is the Senate. Arlen Spector (yes, I know Bush helped him in primary) said he would not support a candidate that was filibustered so that leaves out Brown and Owen. I heard his interview with Clement did not go well. My choice would be Luttig too, but can you really expect to get 60 votes with this Senate? The Republicans would not have gone nuclear for Michael Luttig or for Edith Jones. Bush is taking all the heat for the Republicans in the Senate.
What is your evidence?
And so I ask you as I asked others. Name me one Judicial nominee that Bush has put on the court that has adjudicated as ANYTHING BUT a strong conservative strict constructionist Judge. JUST ONE! EVERY JUDGE Bush has put up has been the kind of judge he said he would put up in 1999. And you can't prove otherwise. I with that Border control was tighter and the budget was smaller, but that doesn't mean I'm going to turn on Bush because he isn't doing it the way I would. He's the President, not me, and he has information that you and I do not and never will have. And he KNOWS Harriet Miers. YOU do not.
For starters, try:
The Beltway Boys on Harriet Miers
Kristol: What Is To Be Done? (A bad week for the WH but, in a way, not-so-bad for conservatism)
Why did Bush do it?
HARRIET MIERS WRITES -- YEESH
Dollars to doughnuts, there's every sign that Miers isn't up to task
I don't know how much that tells us. Left-wing pro-abort Moby is also a "born-again" Christian, as is Jimmy Carter. Hillary Clinton fancies herself an Evangelical. I'm not sure that Bush genuinely favors a Constructionist approach to interpretation of the Constitution, and I have come across "Culture of Life" statements in which he has said he opposes the reversal of Roe v. Wade and subsequent illegalization of abortion in some states, as our culture is "not ready" to stop terminating children. I don't know if this is the "born again" approach to the issue. I'm also curious about the fact that Miers and Bush have been attending St. John's Episcopal Church in recent years. Episcopal churches in large cities are not usually the best place for conservative Christians, but would fit better with Bush's support of Embryonic Stem Cell research. Maybe liberal religion is the source of his change of heart on gay civil marriage?
And when the GOP advanced Bob Dole.
Milqtoast conservatism is NOT a winning political strategy.
I blame the GOP, not the voters.
Where exactly is what I said whiney? I said WHAT IS, very matter of factly, and if someone doesn't like it, that's their problem. Give me an example of something I said that is inaccurate, or is it just that you disagree and think you could have picked a better person than Bush? It's easy to coach a game from a recliner while you watch it from a big color TV in a/c comfort.
Given that yuseguys need to work real hard to elect more truly conservative Senators in order to solve the
real current problem, I'm concerned that you are expending your valuable {if not finite} energy flailing away at the straw man.
It seems that there are two central camps:
1. Those who see this as the best chance to engage the enemy head on, draw copious quantities of blood and leave the enemy utterly vanquished. Or, willingly die on the battlefield content that they've sacrificed themselves for a noble cause.
2. Those who see the war as a war and are not yet ready to define it in the terms of a single, bloody battle; regardless of the momentary satisfaction of bloodlust it may bring.
The scope and extent of the arguments of generals rarely are shared with battalion commanders, platoon leaders, sergeants and corporals. Yet, when the generals decide, the rest of them must go forward. Front line grunts may disagree with the choice made, but forward they go.
Active debate between the blood spillers and the decision makers is a healthy thing, in the main. However, there is always a small, quite vocal at times, minority - both generals and corporals - for whom the immediate battle both defines the war and determines its outcome; usually due to the inability to shift from the narrow focus of the task at hand to the overall stratgey required to triumph in the end; for a variety of reasons not all of which either are explainable nor are logically evident.
The logical conclusion in this instance seems to be to maintain the ability to constructively and realistically criticize the process by which this decision was made. However, any specific, personal criticisms of the nominee's abilities, capabilities and probable future performance cannot logically be done until more insight is gained; which will only occur during the hearing process. Only then, will it be possible to render a cogent, logical decision; unless of course, one is in the habit of making such decisions from a foundation of emotion rather than logic.
Here's another interesting variable to throw into the argument. I wonder how many of the senators who may vote "No" on this nominee, yet who voted "Yes" for Ginsburg (and also, those senators' supporters who continue to vote for them in election after election and are FR posters) - knowing that they fundamentally disagreed with her ideology, her beliefs and her general world-view - will be able to logically justify that "No" vote if this nominee's positions more closely mirror theirs.
No, the problem is Bush.
While I could spend weeks excoriating the pathetic excuse for a "deliberative" body known as the United States Senate-which takes the idea of defining mediocrity down seriously-the fault lies at the feet of President Bush.
As the adage goes, "the buck stops here."
Bush has created a disturbing precedent in choosing Roberts and Miers. He has sent the unmistakable message that known conservatives need not apply. Some will say, "...but look at his appellate appointments." Sure, he made excellent appellate appointments, but he left them to twist in the wind in his first term. He won re-election (thanks to Jerome Corsi and John O'Neill) otherwise the appointments he abandoned in his first term never would've made it this time around. I'm sure the stealthy nature of his SC nominations are not lost on his appellate appointments, either.
The backlash to this appointment is about the fact that Bush has done nothing to earn the faith that you give him freely.
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