Posted on 10/20/2005 10:02:51 AM PDT by Crackingham
It isn't just about abortion. To William Kristol, one of the nation's most influential conservatives, the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court breaks a bedrock campaign promise President Bush made to the Republican right about "the future of American jurisprudence."
If the Senate confirms the White House counsel and longtime Bush adviser to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Kristol said Wednesday, "Bush would end up not having moved the court to the right at all," despite having appointed both Miers and newly sworn Chief Justice John Roberts.
Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and a prominent conservative commentator and political analyst, delivered a harsh assessment of Miers, and of her prospects of winning Senate confirmation, during a telephone interview before coming to Seattle for a speaking engagement tonight.
Miers' nomination has stirred outrage on both the right and the left. Conservatives have decried her lack of a record opposing abortion and on other litmus-test issues, and abortion-rights advocates are alarmed about her defenders' suggestions that she is an evangelical Christian who can be trusted to be an opponent of abortion.
"The White House has now gotten itself in the worst of all possible worlds. She's a stealth candidate, but now she's not a stealth candidate, and she's not a distinguished candidate," Kristol said.
"If you're a conservative, the strongest argument for her is, 'Trust Bush; he knows what he's doing.' I don't think that's a strong argument."
Politically opposite critics are united, too, by concern over Miers' lack of credentials for the nation's highest court and what they see as cronyism in the president's choice of a loyal acolyte over more-qualified candidates. Miers has never been a judge nor established a record of her views on constitutional issues.
Not that Miers would dare do so, given the condemnation it would engender from political moderates, but what if she were to publicly condemn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision legalizing the right to abortion? Would conservatives decide she's OK after all?
"I don't have a problem with a candidate saying that," Kristol said. "I'd prefer that someone with a really long and distinguished record in constitutional law say that and make the case" justifying it from a constitutional standpoint. He suggested Miers would lack the intellectual heft to make a persuasive case before hostile senators.
What conservatives want, and what they feel Bush promised them in 2000 and 2004, Kristol said, was not "just a person who votes right most of the time; it's someone who can influence the future of American jurisprudence" by becoming a dominant and persuasive voice for conservative principles.
If Miers is confirmed, Kristol believes, "she would be a pretty conservative vote for Bush" for the duration of his term, out of loyalty to the president. "And then she'd be like (Anthony) Kennedy or O'Connor," two moderately conservative justices and occasional swing votes on the court. O'Connor has been a key vote for abortion rights.
"You'd end up with only two real conservatives on the court, (Antonin) Scalia and (Clarence) Thomas, and Roberts as chief."
"I hope she withdraws (her nomination), and I remain skeptical that she will be confirmed," Kristol said.
"If it actually got to a vote, I think every Democrat would vote against her as a Bush crony who showed her cards as a strong pro-lifer." And she is "vulnerable from both sides" of the Senate Republican spectrum, with conservatives who are alarmed at her lack of a clearly conservative paper trail, and with moderates who would vote against her for her seemingly anti-abortion views, her mediocre credentials, or both, Kristol said.
"The president has given Republicans a difficult vote and Democrats an easy vote."
"We shouldn't forget many posters here at FR are really liberals, Democrats, Perotistas, Buchananites, or McCainiacs........."
And to which of these groups do you belong?
Hey, wait a sec, Brownie says he'll vouch for her competency...
We're in it for the duration.
(and well beyond, I might add)
The National Review might have had some misgivings, given the strong pull of identity politics in this country, especially for a member of a minority like Thomas. That doesn't mean, however, that they considered him a "blank slate."
Thomas was well-known even in his EEOC days as an Ayn Rand libertarian. He used to have his staff view The Fountainhead during lunch hour. He also had a name of his own around DC, unlike Miers, who no one had ever heard of!
An honest read of this post -- Post #139 --- on another thread should convince you that your comparison between him and Miers is way off base.
I think you missed one.
Tin foil hat Bircher? Naw, more likely a lock and load Chronicle of Culture Groupie. I'll bet you'll have a blast at Halloween staying up late and sharing Bilderberger horror tales with your friends.
Dissent in Kelo v New London
Argues an interpretation of the takings clause of the 5th amendment ("public use")
I fail to see how knocking down Clarence Thomas advances support for Harriet Miers. But that's just me. I'm sure that in your eyes, I'm as big of a "me too" follower as Clarence Thomas is.
There were four dissenters to the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the use of affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School [Barbara Grutter, Petitioner v. Lee Bollinger Et Al], but only one, Justice Clarence Thomas, the high court's only African-American, attracts outright sneering.http://www.sptimes.com/2003/06/29/Columns/Justice_Thomas__disse.shtml
Justice Thomas: "Dope is cool."
Justice Scalia: "Let the cancer patients suffer."It was about what the Constitution's commerce clause permits and, even more abstractly, who decides what the commerce clause permits. To simplify only slightly, Antonin Scalia says: Supreme Court precedent. Clarence Thomas says: the Founders, as best we can interpret their original intent. ...
Two years ago, Thomas (and Scalia and William Rehnquist) dissented from the court's decision to invalidate a Texas law that criminalized sodomy. Thomas explicitly wrote, "If I were a member of the Texas Legislature, I would vote to repeal it." However, since he is a judge and not a legislator, he could find no principled way to use a Constitution that is silent on this issue to strike down the law. No matter. If Thomas were nominated tomorrow for chief justice you can be sure that some liberal activists would immediately issue a news release citing Thomas's "hostility to homosexual rights."
And they will undoubtedly cite previous commerce clause cases -- Thomas joining the majority of the court in striking down the Gun Free School Zones Act and parts of the Violence Against Women Act -- to show Thomas's "hostility to women's rights and gun-free schools."
I hope President Bush nominates Thomas to succeed Rehnquist as chief justice, not just because honoring an originalist would be an important counterweight to the irresistible modern impulse to legislate from the bench but, perhaps more importantly, to expose the idiocy of the attacks on Thomas that will inevitably be results-oriented: hostile toward women, opposed to gun-free schools . . . and pro-marijuana?
Influential!!! LMAO!!
Conservative!!! Can't stop LMAO!!
With all those boogeymen chasing you, be careful not to back yourself into that narrow crack in the political spectrum through which most of the small, irrelevant political particles seem to fall.
You still missed at least one more though.
Great post.
What you have done here is to shine a light upon that ugly no-man's land between hating the courts and wanting the courts to decide one's own way.
Which is it?
You set up a false conundrum.
Follow the words of the Constitution. That's all a Justice has to do.
Lawrence v. Texas would wind up being overturned.
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