Posted on 10/06/2005 2:24:09 AM PDT by AntiGuv
That having been said, the Meirs pick was another administration misstep. The president misread the field, the players, their mood and attitude. He called the play, they looked up from the huddle and balked. And debated. And dissed. Momentum was lost. The quarterback looked foolish.
The president would have been politically better served by what Pat Buchanan called a bench-clearing brawl. A fractious and sparring base would have come together arm in arm to fight for something all believe in: the beginning of the end of command-and-control liberalism on the U.S. Supreme Court. Senate Democrats, forced to confront a serious and principled conservative of known stature, would have damaged themselves in the fight. If in the end President Bush lost, he'd lose while advancing a cause that is right and doing serious damage to the other side. Then he could come back to win with the next nominee. And if he won he'd have won, rousing his base and reminding them why they're Republicans.
The headline lately is that conservatives are stiffing the president. They're in uproar over Ms. Meirs, in rebellion over spending, critical over cronyism. But the real story continues to be that the president feels so free to stiff conservatives. The White House is not full of stupid people. They knew conservatives would be disappointed that the president chose his lawyer for the high court. They knew conservatives would eventually awaken over spending. They knew someone would tag them on putting friends in high places. They knew conservatives would not like the big-government impulses revealed in the response to Hurricane Katrina. The headline is not that this White House endlessly bows to the right but that it is not at all afraid of the right. Why? This strikes me as the most interesting question.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Noonan: "Back to Ms. Meirs herself, and the merits of her nomination. What would she be like on the bench? I know the answer. So do you. It's: Nobody knows. It's all a mystery. In considering who will fill one of the most consequential power positions in the country we are all reduced to, 'I like this, I don't like that.'"
Another 'barking moonbat' joins with Norquist, Weyrich, Coulter, Levin, Malkin, Goldberg, Kristol, Savage, Limbaugh, Ingraham, Novak, Buchanan, the Eagle Forum, Operation Rescue, et al.
Peggy Noonan:
Here are some maybes. Maybe the president has simply concluded he has no more elections to face and no longer needs his own troops to wage the ground war and contribute money. Maybe with no more elections to face he's indulging a desire to show them who's boss. Maybe he has concluded he has a deep and unwavering strain of support within the party that, come what may, will stick with him no matter what. Maybe he isn't all that conservative a fellow, or at least all that conservative in the old, usual ways, and has been waiting for someone to notice. Maybe he has decided the era of hoping for small government is over. Maybe he is a big-government Republican who has a shrewder and more deeply informed sense of the right than his father did, but who ultimately sees the right not as a thing he is of but a thing he must appease, defy, please or manipulate. Maybe after five years he is fully revealing himself. Maybe he is unveiling a new path that he has not fully articulated--he'll call the shots from his gut and leave the commentary to the eggheads. Maybe he's totally blowing it with his base, and in so doing endangering the present meaning and future prospects of his party.
Whatever the answer, history is being revealed here by the administration every day, and it's big history, not small.
What is the dear lovely Peggy thinking?
It's definitely worth reading the entire op-ed! Excerpts can't do it justice.
Well then ........... she'll be in.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Someday the bushbots are going to realize that calling everyone names that don't agree with the President is not a winning tactic.
Meanwhile, I think this nomination marks a turning point for Bush. He's jumped the shark and is no longer relevant. He's truly a lame duck now.
Well, at least she can still string the words together......
;-)
Really? When did that take hold?
Would you like to remove that beam from your own eye?
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
There you go. It's still not winning any points.
Or maybe the President did what was right for the movement rather than what would've made the members of the movement happy.
His personality is more like that of a parent than that of a petty politician. The Left regularly underestimates him. It seems many on the Right have fallen for the same kind of elitist thinking that causes one to underestimate him.
I swear - he's outsmarted every single one of his opponents, and not it seems as if he's outsmarted a large number of his own supporters.
And everyone from the Left to the disappointed Right are still calling him an idiot who got lucky a few times.
Pitchers balk ....... and Peggy looks foolish. She's been hanging around Manhattan too long.
This may very well be true.
You consider the term bushbot a derogatory name? Interesting.
"Another 'barking moonbat' joins with Norquist, Weyrich, Coulter, Levin, Malkin, Goldberg, Kristol, Savage, Limbaugh, Ingraham, Novak, Buchanan, the Eagle Forum, Operation Rescue, et al."
Bears repeating. The Bush fan club spinsters has lots of work to do.
Good. There are more than enough eggheads out there.
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