12% huh??
Oh yea .. it's sinking ... / heavy sarcasm >
Frum has a lot of ego invested in this matter.
Newsweek is reporting that the White House has also recruited New Hampshire politico Tom Rath to threaten to oppose the presidential bids of any senator who opposes Harriet Miers. But Rath is as responsible as anyone for putting David Souter on the court. What on earth did they say to him? And if those assurances were contradictory, why should anybody believe either?
You're funny, Sparky. You've run Frum 10 ways from Sunday to try to build a "tsunami" against Miers. And it ain't happenin'. The broad grassroots seems to like her.
NRO, you have lost the argument. Comparing poll A by firm 1 to Poll B by firm 2 is so intellectually dishonest it boggles the mind that any supposed "Conservative" thought they could get away with it! No matter how NRO trys to spin it, 12% agree with the Hate Hariette Dogma. The Hate Harriet always crowd has LOST the debate. Clinging to it dogmatically rather then admit your error will NOT change reality. Learn to live with it.
Also, 43% say the Senate will vote to confirm, 26% say the Senate will vote to reject, 19% don't know, and, oddly, 13% say her nomination will not make it to a vote. Source is here.
So, even with all the hullabaloo, this particular poll still says Miers will be confirmed, though by less than the Rasmussen poll.
Since we don't know the internals of this poll, it would be best if a similar poll were taken next week to determine if there were erosion or an increase of support.
Absent that, this poll is being selectively used by Frum for his daily blast at Miers.
He simply can't get it through his head that Miers is not going to withdraw.
This is already happening. The Evangelical conservatives who sprang out of the gates with support for Myers are mostly keeping quiet at the moment. Gary Bauer has played this role most publicly, backing off what he first said, but you don't hear much from the others, either.
"Empty assurances" has been my evaluation. It all came from Karl Rove and some selected Texas judges who are friends of the nominee. It's unlikely that Rove knows where she really stands on these issues, or wants to know. He was just doing his job.
"to oppose the presidential bids of any senator who opposes Harriet Miers."
That's it, guys! Time to play hard ball against any conservatives who oppose the PRez! You just go beat the hell out of them! Aaarrrgh! Show those conservatives who the boss is!
(Sure wish someone with some stroke could get the political geniuses in the White House to oppose people in the primary who are liberals, rather than those who are conservatives....).
By the way, I think Frum's petition is irrelevant. I don't see any purpose that could be served by signing it, and I doubt whether many others who oppose this nomination see much purpose in it either.
Whether Frum has his nose out of joint for some reason, I don't know. But what he has said so far has been reasonable enough, except for those who want to support Bush and Miers regardless of the facts.
Where are those facts regarding the nominee? I'm wanting to compose pro-Miers selling points, and need something to work with.
Put this into the "We are still opposed, and every day that we are opposed add more days to the already mounting number of days that we have been opposed. Soon there will so many days that we have been opposed that the shear weight of all those days of opposition will topple the nomination."
"And think of how bad it will be if we actually get a new piece of evidence that proves our charges against her!!!"
Seems like Frum has lost his argument.
Oh, don't forget the "shocking story" that evangelicals who joined the party mostly to overturn Roe had a meeting where they speculated about whether the nominee would overturn Roe.
Certainly this must be the first time there has ever been such a meeting? No, it's more likely this is just the first time that anybody attending the meeting was actually an enemy out to sink the nomination.
Oh, and after a week of running his famed "Petition" to request Miers withdraw, with several days of hawking the petition on Laura Ingraham's show, on her web site, on National Review, and I assume a lot of other places, he is pleased to report that out of the 280 million people in the country, he has a phenomenal 3842 signatures.
Wonder how many of them are from DU.
I am certainly thinking that those 3842 people are much more qualified to pick our nominee than the President. We should amend the constitution to write this petition stuff into the advise-and-consent clause (or better still to the nominations clause). Or maybe we should just fight nominees that could be constructionists in the hope we get some more Souters and Ginsburgs and they can just adopt this new constitutional opportunity.
"This is a deeply troubled nomination and will only get worse. For his own sake, for the sake of the party, President Bush should withdraw it now. If you agree, I hope you will consider clicking on that tally button above and adding your name."
I agree - WITHDRAWL HER!
Enough is KNOWN about her to indicate she is NO conservative.
David Frum can spout all the anti Miers rhetoric he can muster. In the end he'll be on the losing side. Miers will win confirmation and she'll be more of a conservative then SD O'Conner was. Objective accomplished.
My views have started to sway against the President because, with a little help from my friends on FR, I have come to recognize some of the "elitism" coming from the Administration. The charge of "sexism" was and is revealing, ridiculous and a waaaaaayyyyy off base projection by the Whitehouse, who, I feel are the real sexists in this skunk spraying contest. It's not Miers fault that she was born a woman but it's also not any kind of a qualification. It's only an irrelevant matter of fact. I'm very troubled by what I have seen from Miers' history and writing. I really want to read and see more of her, watch her hearings, and base my opinion and action on that.
About these points:
(1) I think a nominees' personal views on religion and abortion are utterly PROPER for Supreme Court selection criteria. We take it for granted that no nominee is in favor of slavery but if one were found to be pro-slavery, she would certainly be disqualified regardless of her alleged judicial philosophy. I think it's an outrageous fiction to expect that any human being could be aloof from the war against religion and life within our civilization. If religion is off limits for a lifetime Supreme, then we have already lost that war.
(2) congressional-executive relations have been damaged even further Conservatives should not care about this because it is manifestly obvious that Congress are an abdicating pantheon of double talking, hog-farming cads whose every word, thought and action drip with duplicity and guile. Those guys think the SCOTUS is just a Super Senate anyway. I'd love to see our "compassionate" President Ado Annie find her veto pen. I'd be happy to see EVERY "legislative agenda" die and rot for the next three years.
(3) The assurances offered to the Arlington Group were almost certainly empty. I'm a very religious conservative. The Arlington Group does not speak for me.
I have great reservations about Meirs. But I am sick of David Frum. He has the elitest opinion that even if she votes the way we want, she's not good enough.
Well Mr. Frum, look at what you wrote in July, before she was nominated. Why no objection then?
"....in the Supreme Court sweepstakes: Keep an eye on Harriet Miers, White House counsel. Miers was the first woman president of the Texas Bar Association, a co-managing partner of a 400-lawyer firm in Texas, a one-time Dallas city councilor, and by the by, the personal lawyer to one George W. Bush. She joined his staff as governor, served as staff secretary (Richard Darman’s old job) in the first administration, and now oversees the White House’s legal work. She is quiet, discreet, intensely loyal to Bush personally, and – though not ideologically conservative – nonetheless firmly pro-life. Plus she’s a woman. Double plus – she’d be a huge surprise, and the president loves springing surprises on Washington and those pundits who think they know it all." [emphasis added"
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