Posted on 10/20/2005 1:15:35 PM PDT by Pukin Dog
“The army is not properly equipped for an invasion of an enemy's territory. It lacks much of the material of war, is feeble in transportation, the animals being much reduced, and the men are poorly provided with clothes, and in thousands of instances are destitute of shoes. Still we cannot afford to be idle, and though weaker than our opponents in men and military equipments, must endeavor to harass, if we cannot destroy them. I am aware that the movement is attended with much risk, yet I do not consider success impossible, and shall endeavor to guard it from loss.” – Robert E. Lee (September 3, 1862 – Letter to Jefferson Davis)
Last week, with considerable difficulty, I posted that I had changed my mind and decided to support the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. I hope that this post will help some of you understand why this nomination must be supported until it is either withdrawn or it succeeds in gaining Senate confirmation.
I make no bones about the fact that I believe that the nomination of Harriet Miers is a very, very large mistake by the Bush administration, probably the biggest mistake that they have made in office. I believe the choice to have been one made in the heat of battle, under duress and strain over the surprise decline of prior selections, against the goal of completing Senate confirmation before the end of November. A selection of a willing candidate had to be made, and the President mis-stepped in rushing to select Harriet Miers without proper vetting.
So, in light of that, (which is all true) why am I now suggesting that Harriet Miers should be supported?
Because this is war.
We Conservatives are at the brink of victory, where the enemy is most dangerous. Just as you have seen in Iraq, at the time of nearing victory is exactly the time when the enemy becomes more violent and deadly in their attacks. It is not because we are losing the war, that we find our leaders either attacked in the media, or worse; the continued attempts to criminalize Conservatives through the legal system. It is happening because we are winning.
We are winning in spite of the fact that our Conservative Army is in very, very bad condition after years of battle against our Liberal opponent. Our leadership in the Senate consists mostly of tired, beaten, scared members, most of them unwilling to take the fight to the enemy for fear of losing the ground they have gained.
In any war, it is always a goal to destroy leadership first. You target and attack the enemies Generals as a common early tactic. Our enemies have never been able to defeat the likes of Tom Delay or Karl Rove on the battlefield of ideas, so they now seek to remove them from the war altogether through continued attempts to remove them from their winning positions. The enemy if successful can weaken our leader by removing his warriors from the fight. Our enemies understand the unfortunate truth that there are only a few true warriors left in our political army, and if they can get to them (through our failure to protect their flank) they can then gain ground simply by limiting our ability to attack them. No war is won on the defense, and on the defense is where we are. We are not on the defense because of the decisions of one George W. Bush; we are on the defense because his Army is tired and weak, and also there are phony among them.
Anyone who believes that an Arlen Specter or a John McCain is going to fight to the death for Conservative principles is an absolute fool. If you think that Trent Lott or Orrin Hatch won’t sell your Conservatism down the river for another 6 years feeding at the public troth then respectfully, you are dumber than dirt.
In war, you must have no weak areas for the enemy to attack, and we have a lot of them. We attack Bush for signing Campaign Finance reform much more than we attack John McCain for creating it. We attack Bill Frist for not going Nuclear; instead of attacking the RINOs who would have obviously defeated the measure had Frist tried it.
In the Miers nomination, I believe the President looked at his situation, and the conditions of his troops, and took the path of Robert E. Lee; choosing not to lose, when faced with a situation where the condition of his troops made it impossible for him to win. In doing so, he repeated a mistake that many, many leaders have made before him. He made a decision from weakness, and that cannot be denied.
We can (and should) attack George Bush when he makes poor decisions from a weak position, but now is the time to attack those who put him in the weak position to begin with. You can’t really blame the Democrats, because they are who they are. We know their tactics and should be better prepared for them. You can’t blame the RINOs for the same reason. If you know your enemy, then there is no excuse for allowing him victories against you.
So where does that leave us?
As has been made clear before; “You go to war with the Army you’ve got, not the one you want”. That is where we are. Right now, we may not feel so great about our Army, but are we going to let them be defeated because we don’t agree with their tactics and methods? Sure, we can stand back and wait, or leap from the train because we are mad at the conductor, or we can dance with the one who brought us, people.
Now, forgive my over-use of clichés, but that’s the best I can do at the moment.
We voted for the man, we stood with him and defeated our enemies at every turn. Victory is near, and our enemy has ramped up their attacks, hoping we will shrink from the fight.
Let us stay the course, and stay on the side of President Bush. He is not a perfect man, but he is our man. In war, sometimes that just has to be enough. Now can we lower our voices enough to remember what side we are on in this fight? Every one of us has the right to criticize the general direction our leadership is taking at the moment. Whether it is spending, the borders, Miers, Iraq, whatever. We should never forget that those in Washington work for us, and are subject to our approval. That does not mean however, that we should help our enemies defeat us by handing over our leaders at gunpoint.
I believe the debate can only strengthen us, but we should keep it as debate and not open warfare against our side. The war for Conservative ideas will not be won during the term of our current President, but I think if we want more and better Generals down the road, we need to stand with this one.
Win or lose, I’m standing with President Bush.
bump for later.
I hope you're right. I think in a straight-up Luttig nomination, if the Dems filibuster, we win. My concern is that after a Miers withdrawal we'd have a hothouse atmosphere, similar to the period after the Bork rejection, where we might not get the pubbie crazies. We'd get red-staters like Graham, but probably not the blue-staters like Chaffee, Snow and Collins. And we might not get crazy John McCain.
One interesting by-product of all this mess is that the fury from the right will make it harder for many Dems (outside the Kennedy nutburger wing) to oppose her.
PD-
I tried to address your point a bit earlier, but I think I should raise one other important issue:
People are not aware that a war is raging. They don't understand how far judicial activism has eroded the separation of powers. The only way to correct this, is to bring "the war" to a head. Send in Sherman. Send in a constructionist, by God.
Call me an optimist, but I still believe we can win this culture war; however, the "soldiers"(sheeple) must be notified that one is taking place.
"Bush Praises Abbas in White House Visit"
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1234298
No need to convince me......I've been with the President's nomination from the moment she was announced.
I just looked at Dubya's track record on appointing solid conservative judges.......so I trusted his judgment!
Blast the Dems for having litmus tests, blast the Gang of 14 for stabbing the President in the back, and then urge the President to force a fight. That type of attack is directed outward rather than inward, but accomplishes the same goal.
Instead, we turned cannibal and gave the Dems a nice show.
Thank you for an excellent example...
it was worth "firing one round" in this battle to try to take out McCain. I do not believe McCain would have voted against an otherwise conservative justice pick (floor vote or fillibuster), over Roe; and then tried to get the republican nomination in 2008 under a pro-life mantra. How would McCain have pulled that off?
Sure, we know Spector and the twins from Maine and Chaffee would have opposed that person. But McCain engineered this thing, we should have challenged him to see if he had the stones to make it stick with his own DOWN vote on an otherwise qualified nominee.
If for example, Edith Jones had been voted down (or successfully fillibustered) - Bush could always have sent Miers up next. what did Bush have to gain by blinking? party unity? we don't have it now with Miers as the first pick, so we would have been no worse off.
That would demonstrate the wisdom of having civilian leadership of the government.
Conservative senators are the senators annoyed by this pick. How can you blame folks like Specter or Chafee or Collins or Snowe? Reid LOVES Miers.
Face it, in Miers, you are going to war to support other idiocies like the Education Reform bill, CFR, etc. that Bush has done while in office. He isn't a conservative-- hell, just ask him (he's a compassionate conservative)!
He chose Miers because he wanted to-- just like all the other things he's done.
PD, have some balls and fight for the right decisions that are made and don't coddle Bush when he makes stupid ones. Bush is not Pope!
Good post!
- bump -
Stress build character. I think many people are gaining insights under this circumstance, that would not have come with any other nominee. It's easy to fall into the trap of reacting to the "first layer" of an issue (in this case, that was Ms. Miers, the nominee), and not looking one layer deeper.
The ride is a bit bumpy, that's for darn sure.
Pray for W and Our Victorious Troops
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