Posted on 10/06/2005 2:30:51 PM PDT by freedomdefender
In many ways, the biggest fault line emerging among conservatives is between East Coast elites, on the one hand, and rank-and-file conservatives elsewhere in the country. As soon as the [Miers] nomination was announced, Beltway conservatives began griping that Miers, a former Dallas lawyer and a graduate of Southern Methodist University Law School, lacked the credentials to serve on the Supreme Court. "An inspiring testament to the diversity of the president's cronies," quipped National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru. ...
Away from the Eastern seaboard, however, conservatives were warming to Miers. Irate National Review readers wrote to accuse the magazine of elitism. A conservative Texas lawyer complained that calling Miers's old firm "undistinguished" was "the kind of thing that only an absolute snob--someone who takes the position that no Texas firm could ever be anything but undistinguished--would say." Meanwhile, prominent evangelical leaders were busy singing Miers's praises. James Dobson, the president of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, gushed that "Harriet Miers appears to be an outstanding nominee for the Supreme Court." Marvin Olasky, the compassionate conservatism guru, noted with satisfaction that Miers had been active in a conservative evangelical church for 25 years, with all that implies about hot-button social issues.
What explains the divide? ...what's important here isn't ideology but sociology --that conservative elites are frequently as credentialist, even snobbish, as the liberal elites they scorn. ...
To be fair, the conservatives who populate National Review's blog retreated from the credentialist critique of Miers once the angry e-mails began pouring in. They emphasized instead that Miers lacked a coherent conservative legal philosophy--that she'd "never written seriously on constitutional issues," as National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote. But this is really just a politically correct form of the same argument. Pretty much the only places where students are encouraged to develop a coherent "legal philosophy" are the top 20 law schools. These philosophies then get refined in the kind of academic or professional writing that only a tiny fraction of lawyers ever do.
Hinterland conservatives had none of these reservations. An article on Focus on the Family's website talked up Miers's record at the "prestigious Dallas law firm of Locke Purnell Rain Harrell" and quoted the organization's legal analyst, who pronounced himself unconcerned by Miers's lack of judicial experience or fluency with constitutional issues. Contrary to the widely repeated axiom that conservatives wanted Bush to appoint a "strict constructionist," most rank-and-file conservatives don't really care about legal philosophies. They care about their political objectives, such as abortion and gay marriage. ...
So which side will win out? Allow me to answer with a brief digression. A few years ago, I interviewed a top adviser to New York Governor George Pataki. New York conservatives, particularly neoconservatives at think tanks like the Manhattan Institute, were up in arms over the governor's habit of buying off interest groups with generous state contracts. I asked the adviser whether he was worried. Without missing a beat, he told me that no New Yorker had ever rejected a candidate because the "neocons" didn't approve. And he was right: Pataki won an overwhelming majority of Republican votes that fall.
The same can probably be said of legal politics: No voter is ever going to walk into a voting booth wondering whether the president's Supreme Court nominees share her legal philosophy, for the simple reason that most voters don't have a legal philosophy themselves. That may be unsettling to conservative elites. But, then, George W. Bush has never been one to worry about elites of any kind.
what do these fellers have in common.... bow ties and clowns.... East Coast snobs can't stand a Texan kicking their a#$..... the more I hear about this, the more I like Bush's pick. Sometimes just hacking off the DC/East Coast/Ivy League/RINO/Country Club conservative-liberals or liberal-conservatives... is worth having a Bush in office...
here comes the new boss
same as the old boss.... won't get fooled again. I trust Bush on this one.
Me too. Here's hoping that happens.
Exactly. A hypothetical Bubba equivalent of this nomination would be nominating Lanny Davis to the SCOTUS. Of course, we would have been outraged.
ROTFLMAO! Most excellent!
but is enthusiastically supported by the president of the Federalist Society, who has worked closely with her on the judicial appointments process, and therefore may actually know what he's talking about.
LOL!
BINGO!
Someone with a pen is beginning to see and hear what I am seeing and hearing on the ground.
FINALLY!
It's really worse than that. I think it smacks more of pure philistinism, a trait that will condemn conservatism to the scrapheap of history if it continues to grow unchecked.
Not so. Lanny is political. Harriet has kept her mouth shut.
I would listen to their argument if they actually had one
Going to the wrong type of school or working at a not good enough law firm is NOT an argument for why Meirs is a bad pick
If our system were ever allowed to fulfill its potential, Thomas Sowell would be an excellent nominee and would be confirmed. So would a number of historians of American history, undoubtedly be better qualified than the typical lawyer-candidate. The squalid secret no one mentions here is that the average lawyer knows little about the Constitution and cares less. And some of them end up on the Court anyway, like Stephen Breyer.
True, but I hardly consider that a qualification.
Charles Krauhammer too...what a radical that Jacobin is eh?
Very cogent . Says in few words what I have tried to say for days now.
1) Does George Will buy his bow ties at the same place as Tucker Carlson?
2) Do their bow ties spin around when they get mad?
(s)Barbarians at the Country Club Gates?(/s)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.