Posted on 10/11/2005 5:30:20 AM PDT by conservativecorner
'It's not a rebellion, sire: It's a revolution." With those words, the duke of La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt broke the news to Louis XVI that the Bastille had fallen. Looking back on the events of the past eight days, I wonder whether the Bush White House does not feel the same way.
The President's decision to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor with his White House counsel and former personal attorney, the underwhelming Harriet Miers, has detonated an uprising within the President's own party.
Conservative commentators Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, George Will, Patrick Buchanan, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Michelle Malkin and many, many others have condemned the choice.
Washington's tight-knit and usually close-mouthed network of conservative jurists and lawyers is dismayed by Miers' thin record and weak abilities. One Republican lawyer told me of a briefing session to prepare Miers to enter into her duties as White House Counsel a year ago. A panel of lawyers who had served in past Republican White Houses was gathered together. After a couple of hours of questions and answers, Miers left to return to the office. There was a silence. Then somebody hopefully piped up: "Maybe if we can find her a really strong deputy ..."
The anger of conservative legalists and opinion leaders is echoed by rank-and-file Republicans. Last week, I asked readers of the conservative National Review Online Web site to tell me how they would vote on the nomination as U.S. senators: They voted 5-1 to reject the nomination. And while the aye votes were usually expressed in cautious and uncertain terms ("I think we just have to trust the President"), the nays were furious ("not just no -- hell no!")
These impressions are confirmed by opinion polls. A CBS poll conducted last week found that the Miers nomination was the most unpopular since Robert Bork's in 1987. Gallup found that while 77% of self-identified conservatives had supported the Roberts' choice, only 58% supported Miers. Both those polls were taken before at the very beginning of last week's spasm of negative media commentary.
CBS last week also released new presidential approval numbers, based on a survey conducted October 3-5. Bush is down to 37%, the lowest presidential approval rating since the Carter years. That number is buoyed, though, by the President's continued high approval rating among conservatives: 80%.
But Oct. 3 was the date that the Miers nomination was announced. As conservatives digest their disappointment and betrayal, their approval of the President is likely to decline. It's hard to say how powerful this effect will be overall, but here's one clue: A poll Monday of 200 right-of-centre bloggers by the RightWingNews.com Web site found that 49% regarded the appointment as a "bad or terrible" decision. Only 9% rated it "good or excellent." And while 4% of the bloggers said that the decision raised their opinion of President Bush, 53% made them view the President less favourably.
While it would seem unlikely that conservatives overall would react as strongly as these intensely political bloggers, the trend and tendency are both clear.
The problem is made worse by the White House's publicity campaign in defence of Miers. Advocates of the appointment have accused critics of "sexism" and "elitism" -- charges that have been echoed by left-wing Democrats like Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski. There are probably few tactics less likely to impress a conservative audience -- or more likely to convince that audience that Miers is indeed the unqualified crony her critics say she is.
The only thing worse may be the White House's second talking point: emphasizing Miers' personal qualities. Former White House aide David Kuo tells this story in an op-ed posted on the beliefnet.com Web site:
"Harriet used to keep a humidor full of M&Ms in her West Wing office. It wasn't a huge secret. She'd stash some boxes of the coveted red, white, and blue M&Ms in specially made boxes bearing George W. Bush's reprinted signature. Her door was always open and the M&Ms were always available. I dared ask one time why they were there. Her answer: 'I like M&Ms and I like sharing.' "
This anecdote almost invites the retort: Well why don't we go all the way and put Barney the purple dinosaur on the court?
More seriously, it disregards and insults the seriousness with which conservatives have worked for three decades to bring change to America's high-handed courts. There is no domestic issue that conservatives care about more, nothing for which individual conservatives have made greater personal sacrifices than to get ready for the day when a conservative president and a Republican Senate would at last hold the power to fill that crucial swing seat on the court.
President Bush's decision to award that seat to his personal attorney in thanks for her years of service to himself personally has enraged his political base. Ann Coulter expressed that rage in her inimitably astringent way two days after the nomination was announced: "Being on the Supreme Court isn't like winning a 'Best Employee of the Month' award. However nice, helpful, prompt and tidy she is, Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on The West Wing, let alone to be a real one."
Offending your supporters has real-world consequences. With one grave misjudgment, George W. Bush has shattered the coalition that brought and returned him to power in 2000 and 2004.
---This anecdote almost invites the retort: Well why don't we go all the way and put Barney the purple dinosaur on the court?---
That would be OK I guess, as long as we run it by Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, George Will, Patrick Buchanan, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Michelle Malkin and many, many others...first.
If the President knew Ms. Miers so well, did he know she gave campaign donations to Democrats? This one fact sticks in my craw because it shows she is NOT a conservative. We have been suckered once again.
Interesting idea.....to compare the Republican presidents' nominees.
How well did those presidents's other federal court nominees turn out ....compared to Bush's other federal choices?
Of course he did.
I'm convinced she will not.
Time to wake up and smell the coffee!
Vapid.
Bush has put quite a few people on the federal bench. Which of them do you criticize? Bush has put one person on the Supreme Court. Why do you dislike Roberts?
The "7 of 9" bit is no reflection on Bush at all. And what the heck does it mean? Republicans have made mistakes? And so Republicans should no longer appoint anyone to the Suprem Court? Because appointing someone would be "doing the same thing over and over"?
Bush did something different. He nominated a woman whom he knew very very well and whom he trusted. THAT's doing something different.
Some of The conservatives....believe that the President has let them down.
I'll wait for the hearings, before throwing stones at Bush's nominee.
And what is your main objection to her?
Naaa, that's the definition of INSANITY. Stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and not knowing what the outcome will be.
Therein lies the rub. We don't KNOW what MS Miers is about and won't find out until she's on the bench. We will have to trust GWB.
The inability to trust the president appears to be the largest drawback so far, eh?
Male bovine fecal effluvia. She is Souter writ large.
This is the president who put Janice Rogers Brown on the Federal bench.
Then he could have put her on the SCOTUS. IIRC, it was not the president that pushed through her confirmation. It was the conservative base (Club for Growth, Progress for America, etc.).
Maybe Kristol wasn't expectig Bush to do the Dems bidding?
That freakin' ingrate begged W (and Santorum)for support for his re-election, and then begged W to let him stay on as head of the judiciary and now he sticks a knife in his back.
So much for W's stellar ability to judge character!
I've heard that same garbage all over Free Republic too. Constitutional Law is NOT Patent Law is NOT Estate Law is NOT Criminal Law. Areas of Practice are NOT interchangeable.
Hewitt would have been closer to correct at the beginning of the Republic. Now there are 200+ years of precedents set by prior Supreme Courts to be considered. They have to look at what effect any current decision will have on the caselaw that followed those precedents, and what the reasoning behind those earlier precedents was. I'm not married to stare decisis but I've got a lot of respect for it. It's kind of the antithesis of The Law of Unintended Consequences.
As one pundit put it ... with Miers we're getting hamburger when we could be getting filet mignon. We're getting Freixenet when we could be getting Dom Perignon.
And this was the only women who would fit the bill? If you think so, I have some lovely land in the Everglades that will put you in the thick of things if you love wildlife.
"Republicans have a perfectly constitutional, perfectly reasonable case for demanding an up-or-down vote on judicial nominees, "Charles Krauthammer, May 13, 2005
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