Under the Radar (Great editorial about Harriet Miers)

A quiet public servant, who has toiled for years in veritable obscurity, immediately calls her pastor and asks him to pray for her. An unassuming Texas lady, who for years went unnoticed and didn’t make anybody’s short or long list, is stepping into the biggest limelight America can offer a legal mind, the Supreme Court.

Her name is Harriet Miers and people like Rush Limbaugh are fuming. The conservative right feels let down. Betrayed!! They are suicidal, depressed, disappointed and “demoralized”. In short, they are steamed. Pat Buchanan goes postal; Bill Kristol, hysterical; Rush Limbaugh, incoherent.

Everybody needs to get a grip. By the time you finish reading this column, you will feel calm and euphoria sweeping over you. You will be shocked and awed by the brilliant leadership President Bush has shown with this selection. You will know the Court will be in the best hands possible. You will love Harriet Miers. You will wish you had put her on the top of your short list. And here’s why:

1. Note the quote beginning this column: The “meek shall inherit the earth.” This is not just some pabulum I dreamed up. This is what Christians actually should believe. This is what Christ taught. Ordinary workers, who labor in the fields of the Lord, shall inherit the kingdom of heaven. And an unpretentious laborer in the fields of the Lord, and the fields of George W. Bush, might just be the best person for the highest court in the land.

Harriet Miers does not just show up at church on Sunday morning; go downstairs for coffee and donuts; check her Christianity at the door and return to bloodbath politics as usual.

She identifies herself as a “born again” Christian. Now, this is an important distinction. People who identify themselves this way are dead serious about their faith. They live it. They love it. And they would probably die for it. Bored, comatose Protestant mainliners and robotic, zombie-like cultural Catholics need not apply for this personal distinction unless they are ready to take the big leap into being born again, or, as we Catholics say, conversion.

As a Catholic myself, of course, I miss her and wish she’d come home to us. I can certainly imagine, though, how it happened, as the Catholic Church took a nosedive into immorality, corruption, relativism and liberalism after Vatican II.

2. Harriet Miers has toiled in obscurity and she is not getting much respect in her own town. People who toil in obscurity usually don’t owe anybody anything. You don’t see them on endless talk shows schlepping their latest book, that is, in actuality, a bloated, overblown magazine article. The D.C. assembly-line cocktail party circuit probably does it without her.

3. Horror of all horrors, liberal elitism has reared its ugly head! She was not born with a silver spoon stuck in her mouth by an Ivy League alumnus with a Harvard education on the end of it. I mean, come on, Ted Kennedy graduated from Harvard. How great can it possibly be?

4. No personal baggage! No, we don’t have to worry about any frat-house, drunken party images showing up on the internet with this Texas lady. Refreshing, isn’t it?

Not much partying for her it seems, except for a few celebrations with her co-workers, who, apparently, adore her.

She spends most of her time at the office. Being single and never married, no unseemly marriage problems, bimbo alerts or embarrassing divorce papers to be splattered all over The Smoking Gun website; no illegal-alien-nanny-gate problems; no grand-children-who-need-bailing-out-of-jail problems, and, living the simple life alone, she probably doesn’t need a cadre of workers from Guatemala to keep up the estate and then not pay their taxes. She seems to have a nice gentleman friend who shows up occasionally, so, a little romance might do the staid Court some good.

Her lack of bench experience is a red herring. Dozens of Justices brought no bench time to the Court, including the late Chief Justice Rehnquist, whose road to the Court also ran the same course through the White House.

Now, let’s pull ourselves together. This great lady presents a clean slate and appears untarnished. Her main drawback being the intellectual conservative cabal didn’t think of her first.

Harriet Miers came creeping in under the radar like a Stealth bomber; a modest, unassuming, hard-working, experienced lawyer with strong moral, religious and constitutional convictions. Just what the boss was looking for.

I do get it....the hearings are the vetting process.

No, the hearings are an excuse for Judiciary Committee members to make speeches and for nominees to say as little as possible. They're a charade, a stage play. Can you tell me something substantive that came out of the Roberts hearings, other than the fact that he's composed, charismatic, and can think on his feet? Is there anything about Roberts's positions that you learned during the hearings?

No one tells why she isn't the best and brightest

That's because, once again, the burden of proof isn't on those who question whether she is the best and the brightest. She has to prove herself worthy. Roberts proved it to me with his record... and even now I'm not sure he was the best possible pick. We'll see. His conduct during the one case he's heard has not made me optimistic; the federal Congress clearly has no Constitutional authority to decree state law regarding assisted suicide, but Roberts has seemed very skeptical of this position.

If you were asked to make a positive case for Miers being one of the best of the best, what would you say? What could you say beyond "the President picked her and I trust his judgment?"

I have posted many posts on this thread why I support Miers

Let's see...

You've asserted that a "stealth" nominee is called for. I disagree, for stated reasons. Picking a fight with Senate Democrats would be politically wise for many reasons, not the least of which is to knock out Conrad and Nelson in 2006. There's plenty of upside to such a fight, and little downside... if the Democrats refused to allow an up-or-down votes, Red State Dems would pay a fearsome price for it, and then you could nominate Miers.

You've cited MOOSEMUSS... and yes, I am familiar with it. I disagree with Major Mike's argument that it applies. A few specifics:

M. Mass. Mike says the President shouldn't be willing to "spend all his political capital" on a more controversial (read: better) nominee. He overlooks the fact that a successful nomination fight would leave the President with more political capital than he started with. He would have demonstrated political power and an ability to force the Senate to do his will despite the Democrats, and would thoroughly cow the Democratic minority.
O. Objective. Mike says that the objective is the "ultimate emasculation of the Democratic party." He's dead wrong; the objective is a conservative Court. Politics is just the means to that end, and to consider politics as the objective is to fatally take one's eyes off the ball. Furthermore, I disagree that caving to the Democrats by taking pains to nominate a Justice they will find unobjectionable is the way to emasculate them.
O. Offensive. How anybody could characterize the Miers nomination as "offensive" is beyond me. She's purely a defensive pick, chosen in large part because she's unlikely to provoke a fight... as you yourself admit.
S. Surprise. Well, in a battle, I'm sure it would surprise the enemy if an army suddenly dropped its weapons and started dancing the Macarena... but this would not necessarily help achieve the objective.
E. Economy of force. This means you should use the minimum force necessary to achieve the objective -- but not a drop of force less. If Miers doesn't advance the objective, it doesn't matter worth a damn how easy it is to nominate her.
M. Maneuver. You want to maneuver to your enemy's weak point. Picking a Justice that's enthusiastically supported by the enemy's leader is not maneuvering to his weak point.
U. Unity of Command. One of the ways to achieve this is to ensure that your troops have confidence in their leaders and are willing to follow them. This means not leading them to their doom, this means advancing and striking the enemy. In this context, it means not pissing off your base by ignoring their concerns.
S. Security. It does not make us more secure to give the Democrats their way.
S. Simplicity. Well, Miers is certainly simple, I'll give her that.

Let's see... what other reasons did you give for supporting her? Well, you said we needed to get more GOPers in the Senate next cycle. I'm sorry to break the news, but that's unlikely to happen. Serious recruiting failures in Nebraska, North Dakota, and West Virginia have made it likely that at best the GOP will hold its own. On the other hand, if we could've forced Conrad or Nelson to either buck their party or vote to filibuster a conservative nominee, we might've had a fighting shot at picking up those seats, even without Hoeven or Osborne.

Oh, and you've argued that she's not actually unqualified. Well, technically speaking, Lawrence Tribe is pretty qualified, but I sure wouldn't want him on the bench, either. Prove she's qualified, don't try to claim it's up to me to prove she's unqualified.

And you've cited a speech she gave that's on C-Span. I haven't watched it. I will, and I hope it does something to convince me that she really is one of the best of the best.

Well, it wasn't your choice to make or mine. A clear majority elected Bush to make that decision.

Yup, just like a clear majority elected Clinton to make the decision to appoint Breyer and Ginsburg, and it wasn't your choice or mine. Doesn't change the fact that both Breyer and Ginsburg SUCK!

The nominee is clearly qualified

Prove it!

and it's the naysayers who are filibustering the nominee because their "superstar" wasn't picked.

I ain't filibustering crap. I'm just saying that this appears to be a bad decision. Even if Miers is "qualified", why eat a pork chop when there are five filets mignon right in front of you?

O'Connor was a turn-coat regarding her record, but if it all looks good on paper, right?

I dunno. Exactly what was it in O'Connor's record that approaches that of Luttig, Kozinski, Brown, McConnell, or Alioto?

We can do better than a 55-45 split once the RINOs are purged from the ranks and the DUmocrat sponsored voting fraud is eliminated.

Yeah, good luck with that. Got some bad news for you... those RINOs live in blue states, and if you "purge" them, you're likely to get Democrats in their place. Say what you will about the RINOs, they did not vote to make Harry Reid majority leader or Patrick Leahy chairman of the Judiciary committee.

The has-been media will be more than willng to go to bat for any filibustering senators.

And the good and true people in the heartland of North Dakota and Nebraska wouldn't swallow it. The ever-redder West Virginians might consider a filibuster the last straw that breaks their ex-Klansman's back. The blue-collar workers in Michigan might decide that they're not being truly represented by their liberal Senator. And the blue-collar workers in Ohio and Pennsylvania might decide that it's important to keep their GOP Senators after all -- both of whom are seriously endangered in 2006.

Where did you stand on Roberts when many on FR were griping about him too?

I supported him, because he had a judicial record for me to read. I still think we could've done better.

What about any of your choices for a O'Connor replacement that is not currently on the bench?

Not currently on the bench? Hmmm. Let's see.. I'd support William Dyer, Bill Whittle, myself, Tom Coburn, John Hinderaker... eh, too many to list. But my favorite pick remains the Honorable Alex Kozinski.

It took 40 years for the conservatives to get here

Yup. Be a shame to give up all that hard-won ground because we shied away from a confrontation with our enemies.

and it will take longer to undo the 60+ years worth of damage done to our country by LIEberalism.

It will take longer still if we do not use the power when we get it.

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