Posted on 10/31/2005 2:06:13 PM PST by quidnunc
A conservative friend and political animal called the other day. This was before Harriet Miers officially became a bit player in the quasi-comedy, quasi-tragedy that Bush administration No. 2 became this past week. In this production, Ms. Miers went from a co-star to bit player in about 30 days. If she had any speaking lines at all, we already can’t remember them.
Anyway, our friend had a question for the Charles Krauthammers, George Wills, Bill Kristols and other card-carrying, TV-appearing members of the Conservative Intelligentsia who formed the popular front against Ms. ex-Nominee.
The question:
So what if Harriet Miers is no Antonin Scalia, or even Clarence Thomas or John Roberts or William Rehnquist, so long as she concurs with them on all the important cases ? Because isn’t this all about just another conservative willing to tilt the inevitable 5-to-4 decision to the right ?
The answer: No one could be sure how Harriet Miers would vote on the court. Supporting her at this early point would have been a matter of faith, not evidence. Besides, here was a chance for both wings of the Republican Party to get all lathered up and start fighting — a chance neither seldom misses.
To quote David Brooks, a columnist who’s also a kind of sociologist of the right for the New York Times: “The Miers nomination has reopened the rift between conservatives and establishment Republicans… . You know you are in establishment Republican circles when the conversation is bland but unifying. You know you are in conservative circles when it is interesting but divisive.” Also, when you start winning elections instead of losing them. The Reagans and George W. Bushes tend to touch something in the excitable American soul that the Thomas E. Deweys and George H. W. Bushes — the party’s me-too standard-bearers — seldom do. Even when real right-wingers like Barry Goldwater lose, big time, it turns out they’ve laid the foundations for a great ideological revival. Maybe it’s because we Americans are such a dynamic people, and so are attracted to where the political action is, right or left.
So if you’re a writer of a certain tweedy, elbow-patches conservative bent like a George Will, a Charles Krauthammer or a Bill Kristol, it’s a no-brainer. You’ll take interesting but divisive politics every day of the week and twice on Meet-the-Press Sundays. Even if it means losing a battle or three. Better some intellectual exercise than a Republicanism that stands only for being soft on the other side.
The country’s political complexion has changed so dramatically over the last half-century that what used to be the right wing’s intramural squabbles now have become the main event in American politics, just as once upon a time it was the Democratic Party where all the action was. (In 1948, remember, Harry Truman had to run not just against Tom Dewey but “progressive” Henry Wallace and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, too. Now that was ideological fun. )
The most interesting thing about Harriet Miers has been the various and sundry theories surrounding her nomination — during and after, since there was no before. (It was as if Harriet Miers didn’t publicly exist before the president introduced her. ) The interest in Harriet Miers herself was about as high as interest in any other blank slate. There was really no there there to care about.
The day the world first learned about Madame X, a friend proffered three theories as to the, um, thinking behind the president’s out-of-nowhere nomination. They sounded as good as any, and we love a good conspiracy theory. Or three. So allow us to share them:
(1 ) George W. Bush aimed for One Big Thing, and Harriet Miers was just the person for the job. He wanted to make his mark as the president who extricated the abortion issue from the absolutist clutches of Roe v. Wade, with its dubious constitutional basis, and returned it to the state-by-state democratic political process. So all the prez cared about when he chose Ms. Miers for the court was that she’d vote to overturn Roe ; he was indifferent to what else she might do in the larger landscape of constitutional law. And he felt in his heart of hearts that he could count on her to oppose the Dred Scott decision of our time, Roe v. Wade.
According to this theory, W. is crazy like a fox where abortion is concerned but not at all interested in the subtler points of constitutional philosophy — if he’s much aware of them at all.
(2 ) W. and Miss Harriet cooked up an insiders’ deal from the git-go: She’d be a pretend-candidate, a sacrificial lamb. She’d go through the process, bringing about the inevitable, unfair Democratic reaction and filibuster. Then the reaction to such obstructionism would be so intense that the president could appoint another Scalia in her stead. Result: a decisive constitutional victory for the Republican majority.
Such a victory may be in the offing already if the president now nominates a conservative with a solid, public record to take Harriet Miers’ abandoned place. At this point, George W. Bush could unveil his real candidate — an Edith Jones, a Michael Luttig, or some other strong, openly conservative judge like His Honor Michael McConnell — and sit back while his real candidate gets confirmed. Lotsa muss, lotsa fuss, but no filibuster. Plus, he’d have the full-faith backing of the very same Conservative Intelligentsia that opposed him on the Miers nomination, which has been itching for the epic fight with the left it’s wanted — it’s craved — since Robert Bork was borked.
(3 ) Theory No. 3 is that Theory No. 2 is brilliant except for one tiny detail: Ephialtes will always break through. Translation from the Greek: In the end, enough Republican senators will stray off the reservation to deprive the president’s nominee of the needed 50 votes and hand the Democrats a victory. Whether it’s Richard Nixon’s impeachment-in-effect, the Senate trial of Bill Clinton, the Packwood scandal, or the Barney Frank fiasco, one pattern clearly emerges: When it really matters, Republicans won’t stick together and Democrats will. That’s the price the GOP pays for being the party of ideas these days. Ideas tend to differ. Strongly.
Don’t you just love political theories ? They’re a lot like economic theories. They’re seldom totally right or totally wrong. But they’re so much fun to argue. Who knows what was really up with the nomination of Harriet Miers ? Maybe it was simply a case of George W. Bush doing a solid for an old friend. (Although rewarding a bestest buddy with a seat on the Supreme Court is no way to, well, fill a seat on the Supreme Court.)
All we know for sure is that Harriet Miers won’t be the next associate justice of the U. S. Supreme Court — and the George Wills, Charles Krauthammers and Bill Kristols will be smiling ear-to-ear on the talk shows. If they can get a word in about what’s now old news after Friday’s indictments were handed up. One political explosion follows another in this administration as quickly as, well, as they did in the last adminstration.
"Who knows what was really up with the nomination of Harriet Miers ?"
She is from Texas. She is a Protestant, Conservative Type. She sounds Southern.
Who was the last Conservative Southern Protestant to sit on SCOTUS ... and had the votes during their tenure to verify it?
Nevermind ... I'm still just irratated...
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