Posted on 10/22/2005 4:57:44 PM PDT by Zechariah11
Edited on 10/22/2005 5:13:15 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
~~~~ big snip to bottom of page 2 ~~~
Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove no longer appears to fill the role as chief political strategist in the White House, a role he has filled from the start of the first Bush term. Mr. Rove's clear leadership hand went missing some time ago, the leaders say, when speculation grew that he might face indictment in the CIA leak investigation led by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The eruption of conservative disapproval over the choice of Miss Miers surprised the president and others in the White House but not Mr. Rove, the leaders say. They say he has shown, in most instances, a keen sensitivity to the complex concerns of various interests on the political right that, until the Miers nomination, had been pretty much in lock step with Mr. Bush, even when they privately disagreed with him.
Republican insiders said the choice of Miss Miers, who has had no judicial experience, over a list of sitting judges with records of having written opinions on constitutional matters and who are conservative in their political views, probably was made by Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.
Some White House aides privately acknowledge astonishment at the administration's response.
"Who would have believed the wheels would be coming off this early in the second term, and with our own people firing at us?" a White House aide confided yesterda
The buck stops at GWB. All else is excuse.
Blame Laura Bush for this one.
YEP, you're sooooo right...Go Hillary, beat John, win over our RINO's who like to play the blame game like the demonRATs do!
Amen
I did not crawl thru broken glass for Rove or Card.
I did for W and nothing else.
He's president...not those two.
Folks, even the W Times doesn't have any idea what is going on.
GW Bush picked Miers because he knows her philosophy. He doesn't care if you don't trust him. He is a brick wall and you all know it.
Look. Let's put the cards on the table:
1) Our hardcore types on FR object to Miers mostly because of what she is not, rather than what she is. She is not one of the supposed rock-and-roll stars that these folks hoped would be nominated.
2) There is the occasional exclamation of displeasure that goes something like: Why doesn't Bush pound on the RINOs to get them to accept a conservative extremist rather than pound on us to get us to accept an unknown? Now we do complain here about use of terminology in the media so let's rephrase "conservative extremist" to be "clearly and explicitly conservative".
I can almost stop there because almost all other arguments are ancillary. For example:
"She's not a scholar of impeccable constitutional law writings" is a meaningless objection because Ginsburg would pass that test and no one here would approve of Bush nominating her.
"We don't trust Bush" is similarly meaningless because if he'd nominated an FR rockstar the anti Miers crowd would suddenly trust him.
"Bush didn't want to fight, he wussed out." This is, of course, meaningless because it is conservatives who are the failures in the matter. We have failed to elect conservative Senators from Delaware, Vermont, Massachussets, Wisconsin and . . . pick any blue state . . . Illinois. The failure to supply a winning army for a fight is ours, not Bush's and not the GOP's.
So . . . the complaint really does come down to those first two items. It's not about who she is; it's about who she is not. And, of course, the Stevens Precedent renders even that meaningless because a long paper trail is proven to mean just about nothing. The Justices often change.
Given that we know little or nothing of her, there really is no choice other than to wait for the hearings. And from those hearings best we be aware that we are not going to hear what we want to hear -- because nominees are not explicit about such things. What we are going to hear is an absence of anything overt and explicit that we would hate.
That absence of taking a position, in light of the Stevens Precedent, may be the best that can happen from any nominee in any hearing. It's all we got from Roberts, too.
So think about these points. They are all accurate. There is no agenda in them. That's how the world is right now.
Bush makes the decisions, not Card or Rove.
I didn't either. But it now appears that one or the other has actually been driving the train for quite some time. Which, in turn, leads to some interesting questions . . . .
Therein lies the problem. Bush and his minions took conservatives for granted one time too many.
We were never his people. They are not as astute as they claim.
Some White House aides
And you believe this....why?
WP forgot to include Harry Reid...lol.
Card is from Massachusetts. Need I say more?
People forget that Andy Card is a Massachusetts liberal.
Hey, a fall guy could be useful this debacle.
The White House could blame Card, withdraw Miers, appoint Edith Jones. Problem solved. Everyone is happy, but the Demonrats.
Given that we know little or nothing of her, there really is no choice other than to wait for the hearings.
Repeat as necessary.
Works for me.
Forgive me if I don't hold my breath, though...
No problem.
I just don't think Bush has the political capital to appoint a moderate if Miers withdraws.
Of course I could be wrong, maybe he likes Jimmy Carter style approval numbers, but I doubt it.
Yet these same people won't trust the president and his nominee, Miers.
That's the state of conservatism, 2006.
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