Posted on 10/04/2005 3:58:33 PM PDT by RWR8189
Senator Sam Brownback says he and other conservatives have ``a great deal of skepticism'' about Harriet Miers, President Bush's latest nominee for the Supreme Court.
The Kansas Republican is disappointed Bush did not pick a candidate with more of a track record. He had urged Bush to nominate someone who opposes the Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
Brownback compared the nomination of Miers -- Bush's White House counsel -- to that of Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Souter was nominated to the high court by the first President Bush and was believed to be a conservative, but he later turned out to be liberal on the bench.
Brownback is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He will meet with Miers in his Senate office on Thursday.
If he comes out of the meeting convinced, he will pull in a whole lot of conservatives.
Good strategy.
What a whiner! What a troll!
I wonder if the SWB (Senators with balls) can lead an effort to kill this nomination...we really needed another Scalia, rather than an O'Connor clone who will maintain the status quo. Plus today I heard on MSNBC that she argued for abort rights at one time. wtf is that
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
So do I.
President Bush has established two precedents-neither one good-with this nomination:
1. Anyone with any sort of outstanding scholarly credentials whatsoever will never be nominated in the future. Unless of course that person is a radical Democrat, in which case he or she will be swiftly confirmed, a la RBG.
2. No honest originalist can ever be put forward again. If there is to be a conservative, Constitutionalist perspective it has to be shrouded in darkness, only to be revealed when the public's attention isn't fixated on his or her ideas.
OK so we are supposed to back her because she's born again and think she's transformed? C'mon...the American people both left and right deserve a candidate that it is a known quantity. I wanted a head banging conservative. Proud of their achievements, someone I could be proud of .There is something very unsettling and smelly about how he arrived at this decision.
Looks like another conservative unappeable who ought to go and join moveon.org for doubting the president. Right?
The thing I hate the most about this is....that President Bush has we freepers at each others throats...and the Reps at each others throats...
I just heard Buchanan say that "he" has been working for 12 years to get this opportunity on the SCOTUS, and Bush has blown it....
Don't know what Pat has done, but he is taking it personally like Bush betrayed HIM....and I don't see much commonality between he and Bush...
I wouldn't even post on today's press conference LIVE thread because of so much fighting between freepers...I was afraid I would say the wrong thing...and I don't even know how I feel about Miers, except disappointed and mad at Bush for putting US in this position right now!
Completely agree. Principle is now gone. Now the people can view the courts appointments and their decisions as basically a roll of the political dice. Shame.
So do I.
Bravo, brohamie! :o)
WHY on EARTH can't President Bush be as strong and determined on this VERY important issue as he is on the War on Terror? Does he not know the REPUBLICANS WON?
Okay. I'm finished screaming. For awhile, anyway.
But that's the whole point. We are talking about the Supreme Court here. It's not like he is asking us to trust him on his appointment of the comptroller of the currency or something.
Maybe because the Supreme Court is worth fighting for?
Does this mean that I can take out my ear plugs now?
:7)
from the Southern Appeal Blogspot. This seems to dissect precisely the source of concern for many of us as posted by a liberal on the Publius blog:
Publius on Miers and conservative dissent: My liberal buddy Publius makes some excellent observations/points in this post:
Let’s start with our friends across the aisle who finally seem to have lost patience with Bush. What’s important to realize is that Miers isn’t really the source of the frustration – she was the catalyst for the repressed frustration that’s been brewing for a long time and has finally bubbled to the surface. The question that I suspect is on many a liberal mind is – why now? . . . .
The answer is judges. Many liberals simply don’t understand the intensity of this preference – and that the intensity approaches infinity for the conservative base. Although the base – especially the social conservative base – generally favors a wide range of Republican positions, judges trump everything else. I can’t tell you how many times I heard or read someone reluctantly justify their support for Bush solely on the basis of judges. For the sake of shifting the Court right, many of them were willing to overlook everything else. Until, of course, today . . . .
And for years and years, they’ve dreamed of having an opportunity to hoist one of their own on the Court to shift the balance their way. And with O’Connor stepping down, their long wait had ended. At long last, the moment had come – and Bush failed them.
It’s not so much that the conservative base dislikes Miers. I think the anger stems from the opportunity costs rather than from Miers herself. If social conservatives were ever going to get their man (or woman) up there, this was the best chance they’ve had – maybe ever. And looking ahead to the 2006 Senate elections with all the top Republican challengers dropping like flies, it will most likely be the best chance they’re going to have for a very long time to come. Roberts was ok, but he wasn’t loud and proud. This was their moment – the time when they had the White House and 55 Senate seats. Now was the time to get one of their own up there. Instead, they get another unknown and another implicit rebuke.
And it’s more than just a favorable head count they’re after. I think there is also a deep yearning to have a Justice – like Thomas and Scalia – unabashedly and unapologetically affirming their constitutional views. I mean, social conservatives have never really won that battle in the Senate. The intensity and even radicalness (that’s descriptive, not normative) of Scalia and Thomas’s current views were not known during confirmation. I suspect too that there is some lingering resentment that Roberts had to pretend like he wasn’t a social conservative in order to get confirmed. When you feel as strongly about your views as these people do, I think it’s hard to stomach the continuing refusal to nominate a “loud and proud” nominee. Say what you will about social conservatives and the Federalist Society, they have strong convictions on this issue. And that may be another reason why Miers smells so funny – she looks a lot like an opportunistic brown-noser who shifts in the wind according to which party is in power.
The other really interesting question is what in the sh*t was going at the White House. I for one was suspecting some real red meat for the base. Bush is many things, but he’s usually not politically dumb. He and his advisors could see that his support had dwindled down to only the base. If the base were suddenly demoralized, the bottom really would fall out for him – after all, this is the 40% that I thought would continue supporting Bush even if he shot their dog. . . . .
But the interesting question is how Bush could have misread the base so badly. I mean, I suppose it’s possible he knew that they would revolt but didn’t care. That’s possible (see below), but I think the more likely explanation is the one my conservative friend emailed me. For the most part, Bush has delegated judicial nominations to the Federalist Society (which I believe is currently housed in OLC).
This nomination, however, is clearly all Bush. He interjected himself in the process and it shows. And the reason it shows is because it’s a reflection of his disconnect with the world around him – and of the dissent-free yes-man-ism endemic to this White House. Bush doesn’t read and isn’t curious and probably gets all his news through his staffers (see, e.g., Katrina DVD). In this sense, Bush is incapable of making sound decisions as a matter of epistemology – i.e., he lacks the information necessary to make informed decisions because he lives in a bubble.
Francis
No more bum steers! We need more Scalias!
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