Posted on 10/28/2005 1:31:13 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
If there was a single thread that ran through President Bush's two very different picks for the Supreme Court, it was stealth. Neither Roberts nor Miers had committed themselves on Roe v. Wade. Is the president ducking a fight? If so, in this he is not his best self. He hasn't shrunk from confrontations over taxes, or war, or medical research, and his forceful arguments in those areas have amounted to leadership.
Seeking a stealth candidate for the most important seat (i.e., the swing vote) on the Supreme Court certainly looks like weakness. And it's borrowed trouble. Despite the accumulating woes of the past month, the president is not actually feeble. Republicans have a 55 to 45 majority in the Senate. President Bush was recently re-elected after promising to appoint justices like Thomas and Scalia to the high court. There is little constituency for a liberal-leaning Supreme Court. A Gallup poll in June asked in which direction voters would like the president's appointee to move the court. Thirty percent wanted it to move left. Forty-one percent wanted it to move right. And 24 percent preferred that it remain the same. An entire generation of highly intelligent, well-grounded and scholarly legal minds have been credentialed in the past 20 years. Further, as the Roberts precedent revealed, a superior candidate is difficult for at least some Democrats to oppose, which diminishes the filibuster threat. So, lesson one: Don't act from weakness -- particularly when you are not weak.
As the president discovered with the nomination of Harriet Miers, the second trouble with stealth nominations is that people with little or no paper trail can surprise their own side as much as the opposition. The president had confidently declared that Ms. Miers shared his philosophy on judging -- and he must have believed this since (leftist fantasists notwithstanding) he is a man of his word. Yet a series of Miers speeches from the 1990s unearthed by the Washington Post's Jo Becker revealed a woman who was downright enthusiastic about judicial activism -- even justifying it in an extreme case. The Texas Supreme Court had threatened to cut off most school funds if the legislature did not devise a funding scheme the court decreed to be "fair." Miers defended the Court, saying, "My basic message here is that when you hear the courts blamed for activism or intrusion where they do not belong, stop and examine what the elected leadership has done to solve the problem at issue."
No. No. No. The courts are not justified in making policy choices when legislatures fail to uphold their responsibilities. They are not justified in making policy choices ever! If legislatures are lazy or stupid or incompetent, the voters can fire them. But judges sit for life. If they choose to legislate on matters like abortion, homosexual "marriage," school funding, or anything else, they are behaving as monarchs, not jurists.
This is the key point that liberals so often fail to grasp: This debate is about democracy. It is about republican accountability. It is about process. It is only tangentially about outcomes. Those who endorse originalist jurisprudence are not looking to pack the courts with conservative judges who will declare minimum wage laws unconstitutional or "find" a constitutional right to a flat tax. They (we) endorse original intent jurisprudence because it is the only way to anchor judges to the Constitution they claim to revere. In order to adjudicate, for example, what "unreasonable search and seizure" means in the 21st century, judges must ask what the founders understood by the idea, not what Justice Breyer or Souter thinks is fair or appropriate. If justices of the Supreme Court are simply going to legislate their policy preferences, why not simply close down the other two branches, and while we're at it, tear up the Constitution? So lesson two: Avoid anyone who is not an explicit, marrow-deep originalist.
Finally, by choosing a stealth nominee, the president does an injustice to the conservative cause. We are ready and eager to show off our judicial talent. They come in all colors and both sexes (not that we countenance set-asides). Conservative grass-roots groups stand ready to campaign on their behalf -- and more important, to counter any smear attempts by the liberal claque. So lesson three: Mr. President, be of stout heart. A strong originalist like Alito, Luttig or McConnell will do you proud, unite the conservative movement behind you, and chisel a key triumph in your legacy.
For those who just love to trash/spin by taking a person's sentences out of context and further preventing them the opportunity to explain ....here's an update..
Oct 27th 2005
"I share your commitment to appointing judges with a conservative judicial philosophy, and I look forward to continuing to support your efforts to provide the American people judges who will interpret the law, not make it. I am most grateful for the opportunity to have served your Administration and this country."
Most respectfully,
Harriet Ellan Miers
I didn't mean to offend you or others, but in the case of set-asides and quotas, she helped push through a bar association resolution advocating them - federalism had nothing to do with it.
And when it came to "self-determination" on abortion, I read her speech, and she very clearly seemed to be expressing her own personal views on the matter.
You're basing your views of Miers' belief on a resignation letter that was probably written for her. I'm basing mine on her speeches and writings over a period of decades when she was actually speaking and writing for herself.
changes=changed
Are we to just "trust you" that you have this miraculous plan to get past the RINOs?
Bahahaha!!!
Oh..and don't forget, there are other guys on other threads who were once your allies in borking Miers that have their "perfect" candidate too...little rulers all of you.....
"I share your commitment to appointing judges with a conservative judicial philosophy"
"To further that commitment, I am unable to support a person such as myself as nominee to the Supreme Court."
That begs the question..was the infamous "speech" that you based your decision on written by her? Hmmmmmmmmm
Thanks for bringing up that point.
We've already managed to "get past" the imminent threat of one being appointed to a lifetime position of supreme judicial power just in the last twenty-four hours alone, actually... so, obviously: it can be done.
Or wasn't that what you meant...?
I'll have to disagree with you on this one. Miers knew too much about her personal and professional dealings with W. The Senate Dems, Reid in particular, were playiing nice because they wanted to get her into a hearing, where they planned to dredge up things like the Texas lottery info, and possibly even W's national guard info. The moonbat libs wanted this one bad. It's a good thing she withdrew, because while she could have cited attorney client privelege and separation of powers to avoid those questions, it would have played very badly in the MSM.
And the unreasonable demand for info by the Senate was the specific reason she cited for withdrawal.
But beyond that, we need to fight this one out with a proud, strong conservative. All this 'compassionate conservative' garbage has outlived it's usefulness, not to mention the 'new tone'.
The President, if he starts acting like a conservative. Remember Reagan?
Screw the filibuster!
If we had a leadership with guts, we would force the "Constitutional Option", a simple majority vote.
And that proclamation is binding... how?
Would it not be reasonable to conclude that she was just telling people what they wanted to hear, and her consistent positions voiced over the years would be the most likely indicator of her future positions?
All her recent statements prove is that she can parrot talking points on a fairly consistent basis for a fairly short period of time. This is not the basis for making a lifetime appointment.
Incorrect. I "dogged" nothing. (I didn't even dodge, so far as that goes.) I answered plainly; you're just not happy with said answer.
That's a problem, certainly.
Just not mine, is all.
Real conservatives, incidentally, don't start squeaking in schoolgirl falsetto and rolling over submissively, like so many whipped spaniel puppies, whenever even the vaguest possibility of liberals threatening a filibuster is raised, beforehand.
These creatures, on the other hand, do so reflexively:
All a question of just what sort of critter you most accurately assess yourself to be, ultimately.
And they were calling us elitists! Ha!
But I certainly do not think nor will anyone ever convince me that President George W. Bush is afraid of a good fight.
He had proven his mettle over and over, again and again, and unlike dem president's, he had to battle the distortion and mockery by the likes of ABC, CBS and NBC as well as CNN and PBS radio EVERY TIME HE TAKES UP A TOUGH ISSUE...and then some. So he battles not only horrific, cowardly if vile islamo-facists abroad, but he battles an enemy within at home, a partisan press corp hellbent on getting their party ( in every sense of the word) boys and girls back on the throne of power.
It is much more likely that she was writing her own stuff when she was a reletive nobody back in Texas than when she is embroiled in a contentious confirmation battle and has been front page of every newspaper for the last two weeks. Don't you think?
Though I will allow as to how she probably answered the first questionaire from the Senate Judiciary Committee herself. That fiasco pretty much put an end to letting Harriet Miers speak for herself.
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