So, should the nominee have been Luttig, for example, could you guarantee he wouldn't have gone native once ensconced on the court, like Kennedy or O'Connor? No.
I want to hear her testimony. If she is incompetent or appears to be liberal, I will withdraw my support.
"Well-known Constitutional expert Kennedy doesn't seem to have turned out the way his resume and record indicated."
Kennedy also did not have a strict constructionist or originalist record, as a Luttig does. Reagan was warned against O'Connor as she had no such track record either. It's not just that you pick someone exceedingly bright for the highest court or with a good resume. You pick someone who is exceedingly bright WITH a strict constructionist or originalist track record. Neither Kennedy nor O'Connor fit that bill. Luttig does. Priscilla Owens or Janice Rogers Brown do. Miers doesn't. Not at all. In fact barely a record at all. So then it once again comes down to trusting Bush's "gut" instinct. Hope it's better than Bush Sr's was, or Reagan w/O'Connor, etc. Which do you think is preferable, a known track record of strict interpretation of the constitution based on our forefathers' thinking, or an unknown one picked on "instinct"? I'll go for the known thank you. Hopefully we will luck out here, but I sure would have preferred the more known over the unknown. Nothing in life is cast in concrete; however, if a person has a reasonably long history of faithfully interpreting the letter of the constitution and expressing this over and over as their judicial philosophy, that's a pretty good clue. With Harriet Miers we are clueless.