White House Shifts Its Lobbying Strategy

The Washington Post ^ | 10/15/05 | Peter Baker

[NapkinUser]

The White House, caught off guard by the intensity of the conservative backlash to Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, plans to try to refocus the debate over the next week onto her legal qualifications and away from issues such as her religion, senior presidential advisers said yesterday.

Acknowledging that the campaign for Miers had slipped out of their control, the advisers said they will seek to validate her credentials for the high court through a series of media appearances, newspaper opinion pieces and letters of support from various people who have known the White House counsel during her previous career as a corporate lawyer and bar association leader in Texas.

[flashbunny]

---Maybe those in charge are not yet prepared to stanch the bleeding by withdrawing Miers's nomination. But they surely could — and should — now quit making matters even worse by treating conservatives puzzled (to put it as Ed might) over this nominee as if, well, we were Democrats.---

One problem with that statement:

If they were treating us like democrats, we'd already have what we wanted.

[onyx]

I "think" November 7th.

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

Exactly.

[trubluolyguy]

If they were treating us like democrats, we'd already have what we wanted.

---

It would be funny if it weren't so true.

[W04Man]

senior presidential advisers
Is this the new chef they hired recently?
STAY THE COURSE MR PRESIDENT, YOU ARE RIGHT!!

[handy]

I'm convinced we're not being told all the truth on this nominee.

We are in dude.

How else to explain the WH calling us a bunch of sexist, elitist, cynical, idiots for questioning a nominee who was:

Was once a registered Dem;
Gave money to Gore and the DNC (Dukakis);
Apparently thinks Gloria S., etc. is a worthy speaker for an SMU lecture series;
Appears to thinks affirmative action is okay based on her sworn testimony;
Was a member of the WH team that took a pass on Kelo;
Thought the NAACP was not a political organization (by far my personal favorite)
Thought the Federalist Society was too political (too conservative maybe?) for her, but the ABA was just fine...

So many red flags... so little paper trail to give us any comfort...

[Map Kernow]

I can't really see what her "road to Damascus" epiphany was---unless it was that "it's good to be friends with GW Bush!"

[WOSG]

"All the WH has to do is keep David Frum in a box for the next two weeks."

"BWAHAHA! Yep, that's all they have to do! Why don't they just send him off tomorrow on a Carnival cruise for two weeks with two beautiful blondes? That'll cinch the nomination!"

And if those two blondes are Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham, you just might have a plan there.

[unspun]

Are you also tired of gripes against Bush's failure to protect the border?

No, but I don't get the correlation.

Think of Miers as complementing Roberts' stringent constructionist assessment from a kind of Doctor of Sciences point of view with a very nice Master of Arts dose of "I know what the Constitution says, I know and indeed have the worldview of those who framed it! -- and know in my heart as well as (a-hem) my extraordinary mind, what's right."

[Plutarch]

No, but I don't get the correlation.

President Bush also appointed James W. Ziglar Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). He doesn't think laws should be enforced:

It's Official: Illegal Aliens Won't Be Deported

Miers' backers want us to trust President Bush to appoint a second-rate sycophantic cipher for SC Justice. Why should we trust Bush in matters legal, when he appointed an INS Commissioner who will not enforce the immigration laws?

[Texas Federalist]

Why should we trust Bush in matters legal, when he appointed an INS Commissioner who will not enforce the immigration laws?

True. But even more to the point is: Why should we trust Bush's assesment of a nominee as a strict constructionist when he considers himself a strict constructionist and has signed bills like CFR and federal spending bills that are blatantly unconstitutional under a strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution?

[varon]

The White House, caught off guard by the intensity of the conservative backlash to Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, plans to try to refocus the debate over the next week onto her legal qualifications and away from issues such as her religion, senior presidential advisers said yesterday. (My emphasis)

I've been reading that Ms. Miers has been hitting the books of late. Expect to have her trotted out at a new conference in which she'll recite not only the Constitution from memory but also all the amendments ;-)

[Plutarch]

Why should we trust Bush's assesment of a nominee as a strict constructionist when he considers himself a strict constructionist and has signed bills like CFR.

Why because McCain-Feingold was a great idea. Here are these heroes being honored.

[Texas Federalist]

I've been reading that Ms. Miers has been hitting the books of late. Expect to have her trotted out at a new conference in which she'll recite not only the Constitution from memory but also all the amendments ;-)

She can learn the cases in this short time. But she won't be able to reconcile them into a coherent constitutional philosophy if she doesn't already have one. Read a Constitutional Law casebook, then read a book by an academic attempting to articulate a Constitutional interpretive philosophy (like Randy Barnett's "Restoring the Lost Constitution"). There is a big difference in the level of knowledge needed to grasp the latter compared to the former.

[Lazamataz]

It's called stalling. All the WH has to do is keep David Frum in a box for the next two weeks.

LOL, riiiight.

It's Bush's Frum's fault.

[Cboldt]

Are they going to stop the name calling?

My bet is "stupid" or "unqualified to comment" is added to the repetoire of insults, since the legal qualifications are the thrust of the new Miers Marketing campaign.

[Map Kernow]

All the WH has to do is keep David Frum in a box for the next two weeks.

Yep, no "thinking outside the box" allowed.

[Map Kernow]

And if those two blondes are Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham, you just might have a plan there.

Sorry, but I'm booking that cruise! ;)

[Do not dub me shapka broham]

It should also be noted that Ziglar was a close chum of Trent Lott.

Shows where appointing people to crucial positions within our federal government-based solely upon your friendship with them-gets you.