A mild re-iteration from above.
With Owens withdrawing herself, the list of FR rockstars narrows. You have to ask yourself which side would be willing to expose a nominee's historical faux pas. If Luttig had a nanny tax problem in his past, do you really think MoveOn would decide that it was not worth destroying a man's career over?
GW Bush said HM is the most qualified candidate. I interpreted this to include confirmability as a qualification in the context of Bush having called the RINOs. Now it becomes clear the meaning of qualified could have been broader. There may have been vetting problems with JRB or Luttig. It really, truly doesn't take much.
Clarence Thomas was clean and the left manufactured a vetting problem for him. Had they not been distracted by Cindy Sheehan (I often wonder if Bush took a long vacation for this very reason) they would have been far far deeper into Roberts' adoptions.
HM has been vetted clean. That, as much as Bush's knowledge of her philosophy, may have been her most powerful qualification.
I agree, and I would also ask those so vehemently opposed to her to present a list of judicial appointments where the president has let us down in the past. He chose her after calculating all factors involved including the Republicans in Congress. This isn't a case of scratching the back of a close friend. As far as I can tell he has picked conservatives to date.
How will it all turn out? only time will tell.
From Thomas Sowell.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1498234/posts
When it comes to taking on a tough fight with the Senate Democrats over judicial nominations, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist doesn't really have a majority to lead. Before the President nominated anybody, before he even took the oath of office for his second term, Senator Arlen Specter was already warning him not to nominate anyone who would rile up the Senate. Later, Senator John Warner issued a similar warning. It sounded like a familiar Republican strategy of preemptive surrender.
Before we can judge how the President played his hand, we have to consider what kind of hand he had to play. It was a weak hand -- and the weakness was in the Republican Senators. Does this mean that Harriet Miers will not be a good Supreme Court justice if she is confirmed? It is hard to imagine her being worse than Sandra Day O'Connor -- or even as bad.