Posted on 10/05/2005 4:03:47 PM PDT by perfect stranger
I eagerly await the announcement of President Bush's real nominee to the Supreme Court. If the president meant Harriet Miers seriously, I have to assume Bush wants to go back to Crawford and let Dick Cheney run the country.
Unfortunately for Bush, he could nominate his Scottish terrier Barney, and some conservatives would rush to defend him, claiming to be in possession of secret information convincing them that the pooch is a true conservative and listing Barney's many virtues – loyalty, courage, never jumps on the furniture ...
Harriet Miers went to Southern Methodist University Law School, which is not ranked at all by the serious law school reports and ranked No. 52 by US News and World Report. Her greatest legal accomplishment is being the first woman commissioner of the Texas Lottery.
I know conservatives have been trained to hate people who went to elite universities, and generally that's a good rule of thumb. But not when it comes to the Supreme Court.
First, Bush has no right to say "Trust me." He was elected to represent the American people, not to be dictator for eight years. Among the coalitions that elected Bush are people who have been laboring in the trenches for a quarter-century to change the legal order in America. While Bush was still boozing it up in the early '80s, Ed Meese, Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork and all the founders of the Federalist Society began creating a farm team of massive legal talent on the right.
To casually spurn the people who have been taking slings and arrows all these years and instead reward the former commissioner of the Texas Lottery with a Supreme Court appointment is like pinning a medal of honor on some flunky paper-pusher with a desk job at the Pentagon – or on John Kerry – while ignoring your infantrymen doing the fighting and dying.
Second, even if you take seriously William F. Buckley's line about preferring to be governed by the first 200 names in the Boston telephone book than by the Harvard faculty, the Supreme Court is not supposed to govern us. Being a Supreme Court justice ought to be a mind-numbingly tedious job suitable only for super-nerds trained in legal reasoning like John Roberts. Being on the Supreme Court isn't like winning a "Best Employee of the Month" award. It's a real job.
One website defending Bush's choice of a graduate from an undistinguished law school complains that Miers' critics "are playing the Democrats' game," claiming that the "GOP is not the party which idolizes Ivy League acceptability as the criterion of intellectual and mental fitness." (In the sort of error that results from trying to sound "Ivy League" rather than being clear, that sentence uses the grammatically incorrect "which" instead of "that." Websites defending the academically mediocre would be a lot more convincing without all the grammatical errors.)
Actually, all the intellectual firepower in the law is coming from conservatives right now – and thanks for noticing! Liberals got stuck trying to explain Roe vs. Wade and are still at work 30 years later trying to come up with a good argument.
But the main point is: Au contraire! It is conservatives defending Miers' mediocre resume who are playing the Democrats' game. Contrary to recent practice, the job of being a Supreme Court justice is not to be a philosopher-king. Only someone who buys into the liberals' view of Supreme Court justices as philosopher-kings could hold legal training irrelevant to a job on the Supreme Court.
To be sure, if we were looking for philosopher-kings, an SMU law grad would probably be preferable to a graduate from an elite law school. But if we're looking for lawyers with giant brains to memorize obscure legal cases and to compose clearly reasoned opinions about ERISA pre-emption, the doctrine of equivalents in patent law, limitation of liability in admiralty, and supplemental jurisdiction under Section 1367 – I think we want the nerd from an elite law school. Bush may as well appoint his chauffeur head of NASA as put Miers on the Supreme Court.
Third and finally, some jobs are so dirty, you can only send in someone who has the finely honed hatred of liberals acquired at elite universities to do them. The devil is an abstraction for normal, decent Americans living in the red states. By contrast, at the top universities, you come face to face with the devil every day, and you learn all his little tropes and tricks.
Conservatives from elite schools have already been subjected to liberal blandishments and haven't blinked. These are right-wingers who have fought off the best and the brightest the blue states have to offer. The New York Times isn't going to mau-mau them – as it does intellectual lightweights like Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee – by dangling fawning profiles before them. They aren't waiting for a pat on the head from Nina Totenberg or Linda Greenhouse. To paraphrase Archie Bunker, when you find a conservative from an elite law school, you've really got something.
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. Both Republicans and Democrats should be alarmed that Bush seems to believe his power to appoint judges is absolute. This is what "advice and consent" means.
The same people bashing her here, are the ones who consistently trash those on fr who support conservatives over rino's. You can't WIN with a conservative they rage. And what has that policy gotten us? A senate majority that is too fractured to be able to confirm the best qualified conservative picks to the supreme court. Why else do you think the President has to keep going with unknowns?
I've never seen an AC column thread on FR get so many comments as this.
"The Dems are already starting to backtrack as they find out more about Miers."
LOL perhaps she can sell them lotto tickets when she gets to committee..ah i can see it now, questions on how you beat the lottery and does the ticket holder have to cash it in 6 months or else the ticket is worthless ?? oh the expertese she will bring to scotus ..what a giant among our leading jurists..LOL.
[Raised eyebrows.]
Yes you and your vocal minority are pretending as if you are in the right, evn skewing polls to show its in your facor when in reality it isnt.
No it isn't. Look it up.
Many "conservatives" from the liberal blandishments are the blue blood republicans from the Northeast corridor in the mold of Rockefeller.
These "right-wingers", as you so wrongly call them, have not "fought off the best and the brightest the blue states have to offer". Far from it...they swim in the same elitism.
Have you forgotten that these are the same "Conservatives" who thought Ronald Reagan was a light weight?
Ask for a medical leave of absence, Ann...we'll gladly approve it.
Is give Harriet a chance...."
LOL, I hear you. And, I will.......
Please leave George W. Bush out of this.
Ha! How about Barney is just plain cute. Bet that worked for Roberts, amongst Repub women, anyway. :o)
You don't think Coulter sounds like a DUer, calling the president a drunk and a dictator? You think those who are calling her on it sound like DUers? Do I have that right?
Just damn, as they say.
What's going to be in her next column - idiot, moron, chimp...?
How clever.
I think you mean George H.W. Bush.
But, I suppose you think it's not for me to correct such an intellectual as yourself.
"In the end, I suspect Bush put forth 2 stealth candidates to flummox the democrats and to avoid a fight. I suspect the man is exhausted. "
Couldn't agree more. Many on this board sound just like the Rats in their condemnation of the President.
We complain of elitism from the other side. We have become like them.
I post on a couple of liberal boards. The idiot liberals there have the same brain-numbing repetition of irrelevant nonsense and the same inane syntax that you just used here. Heck, I could probably take your post, paste it on that board, and be hailed as a convert by the liberals there.
Is that what you really want to be posting on the premier conservative forum on the internet? A post that could be mistaken for one from DU?
Mistress Cleo:
(In conspicuously bad approximation of a West Indian accent.)
LOOK! Ms. Cleo shawl tell jue wot! Dere will be more ten a few Boooshbuts hoo twill be goin' ahn 'ere ent makin' nescuses fer diss exscribble nomineeee. Rest ashured. Caul mee fer ya tarot card reeding...NOW! Before we run out.
Bush picked someone other then who we want WHAAAAAAAAAAA!" Everything is not perfect! Bush and the GOP run the govt and everything is not perfect! WHAAAA, We hate Bush. Meirs is Bush's choice so Meirs is BAD. Whaaaaa!
Not a SINGLE fact or argument just hysteric hand wringing and name calling. Congratulations! You have PERFECTLY co opted the debating tactics of the Moveon.org Stooges. Feel REAL proud of yourselves.
Just utterly pathetic what the Conservative movement has degerated to. We are SUPPOSE to be the people who think, THIS is the behavior of THEM, NOT US.
You know damn well who I meant.
Born in New Haven, CT. Yale. Harvard Business School.
Salt o' the earth, that one.
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