Wake up, Freepers, this is war.

“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 I hope that this post will help some of you understand why this nomination must be supported until it is either withdrawn or it succeeds in gaining Senate confirmation.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?

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.

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.

Meanwhile, in a perverse sense of irony, I'm still on the "wait-and-see" bus -- BUT I am becoming more wishful that Miers withdraws her own name because of incapability to handle the rigors of the process. I think that my visceral reaction to the attacks on this nominee are rooted in a few of the earliest shots taken at her, attacks that were not only mostly false, but destroyed the "moral high ground" we have worked so hard to take in order to overcome the numerical inferiority of our side regarding true "judicially conservative" nominations. In other words, we have always lacked a majority in the senate to get what we wanted -- a majority originalist court. Too many republicans opposed us. We could only win by making it impossible politically for them to oppose us. Since it also was morally correct, we properly seized the high ground by arguing that judges were above politics. It made no difference whether a judge was a republican or democrat, a liberal or a conservative. It didn't matter what their positions were on the great issues of the day -- because the job of a judge was to interpret the law, not to impose their own opinions.

So while the democrats bemoaned how many judges were appointed by republicans, we could say it didn't matter because judges aren't beholden to party, but to principle.

We got so far that even liberal democrats would grudgingly accept that asking about personal views wasn't worth filibustering, and the weak republicans were able to get cover for allowing conservatives because they believed in judicial restraint.

Further, we had successfully planted in the minds of america that, so long as a pick was not ethically challenged or incompetent, the President has the right to choose whatever nominee they want, and the Senate had no right to argue for specific nominees or complain that there were other people who would be more acceptable.

But when Miers came out, the attacks came from many angles. There was the "we don't know her philosophy" attack. That was a good argument for waiting to find out, and the point was correctly applicable to confirming a nominee.

There WASN'T really a "she's incompetent" right away, that came as we learned stuff, but expressed politely this was a rational discussion to have, meaning it was a valid reason to oppose a nomination.

There was the "there were good people who already were well-known". Granted, many who said this were also part of the previous two groups. But by loudly complaining that Bush picked the "wrong" choice, instead of picking one of the "conservative pundits" choices, we undermined the principle that the President gets to choose the nominee.

If conservatives can refuse to support someone simply because they aren't on the "top 20 conservatives" list, how can we argue against the democrats when they present their own "top 20" list and refuse to approve anybody who isn't on the list?

But even worse were those who immediately attacked her because she had been a democrat, or had given money to democrats, or had said nice things about democrats. Or had supported affirmative action in a legislative body. Or had personally chosen to endow a women's study program.

I believe some of the charges of this group were false. But regardless, these were attacks on the personal opinions of the nominee. Having fought to convince the public that they shouldn't worry that our judge nominees were all hard-right conservatives because they wouldn't push policy, here we were screaming about our own President's pick because of her politics and personal policy positions.

If conservatives can attack a nominee for what they personally believe, why can't the democrats attack a nominee for what they personally believe?

Because of this, I have considered that it would be a disaster for Bush to pull the nominee on the basis of this attack, or for her to withdraw. Doing either would be a capitulation to the idea that personal ideology matters in judicial picks, and that the President must bow to the wishes of political operatives presenting lists of names, rather than choosing the nominee he desires.

Having said all that, I am quite unimpressed with what I can see regarding this nominee's ability to make it effectively through this process. This has nothing to do with her intelligence, which I do not question. It has nothing to do with her politics, that I don't care about. It's not even that I don't believe she will be a strict constructionist -- I don't see any evidence to doubt it, but she hasn't proven it yet.

And I'll also admit that I still don't have enough information to ACT on this feeling. Because I don't trust the MSM, or Arlen Specter. I need more information. But the flap over her questionare, if true, sounds like someone who isn't committed to the process in a serious way.

I know, it could be that the questions were stupid, and she was flippant. But she, of all nominees, can't afford to be flippant and still earn support. She has to meticulously answer the questions in a way that will assure us of her temperament and judicial heft.

Instead, we see signs that she isn't trying to answer constitutional questions with correct constitutional answers. Meaning that if she is going to cite the constitution, she better get it right. I'm still OK but not happy with her saying "she has to read up", but on a questionare she shouldn't put down an answer that isn't correct.

On the other hand, if she can show herself to be less than ready for this task, it will be easy for her to withdraw without it being the fault of conservatives applying "bad reasons" to force her out (bad being because of politics or because the president has to choose from a menu).

If Miers has to leave because she simply isn't ready for the job of justice, then Bush will not have the baggage of having bowed to conservative pressure -- but only if conservatives get smart NOW, and back off from the BAD ARGUMENTS and stick to arguments ABOUT HER.

For example, arguments that she should withdraw because we don't like the process should be dropped. WHO CARES what the process was, if it gave us a good justice we lucked out, if it gave us a BAD person we should reject them because they are BAD. Let's attack the white house AFTER this nomination to make sure they follow a better process, but let's not argue that the PROCESS is a good reason for rejecting a nominee.

And lets drop the "she's got too many liberal ideas" argument, because they will be thrown in our face with the next nominee "He has too many conservative ideas".

And please let's drop the "We need one from OUR list or else we are going to defeat the senators who vote for them" argument. Because that is the argument MoveOn is using to pressure democrats into opposing GOOD nominees for their political, rather than their judicial views.

I hope I can get an AMEN from even most of the anti-miers folks about the inappropriateness of arguing politics, process, or lists as a reason for throwing out a nominee already selected.

So today is the first day that I find myself more hoping she withdraws than hoping she makes it through. Although both choices scare me, because i still have trust that Bush knows what kind of judge she would be, and I'll feel bad if her replacement isn't that kind of justice.

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