Posted on 10/10/2005 5:30:35 AM PDT by gobucks
The Republican base across the country looks more favorably on President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court than the cluster of conservative critics who are opposing her inside the Beltway, according to a Washington Times survey of state party chairmen.
snip
Eileen Melvin, chairwoman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, said she had just come from a meeting with state committee members in conservative Lancaster County, where she asked them what they thought of the Miers nomination. "They said we trust the president," she said.
snip
In Washington state, party Chairman Chris Vance said he e-mailed information about Miss Miers, provided by the Republican National Committee, to a statewide list of 10,000 Republican officials and grass-roots activists. "The next day, I got less than 10 e-mails out of 10,000 from people who were upset with the nomination," Mr. Vance said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
a very good point
The only thing that comes to mind--maybe on Steven's replacement?
You know, this nomination does not smack of having been put together by an expert negotiator who has done his homework. If the WH had put together the best list of qualified individuals they could find from whatever source, including democrats, vetted the list, started with those who were most agreeable to his own party and moved down the spectrum until they found a highly qualified individual who could be confirmed, I would agree with you that Bush did the best he could with a bad hand.
But when your best alternative to a negotiated agreement is far worse than what you could get out of a negotiated agreement - YOU NEGOTIATE. You don't start with your own counsel, known by no one and end with Harry Ried.
You were likely fighting the liberals at home when I was fighting the Communists and the Islamist nuts abroad.
I'm not going to sit down and shut up.
Neither is Rush, Hannity, Coulter, Ingraham, Levine, Will or any of the other big voices with the microphones.
The nomination was a mistake.
The attempt to command Republicans to shut up and obey is a more egregious mistake.
Will you accept the fact that by nominating someone he knows personally, W avoids the mistake his father made in nominating a Souter?
First, if it did not work out you could be fired. Second, they were not hiring you to be chairman of the board with no qualificaitons.
Picking a Souter is not the only way to go wrong.
You dodged the question.
OK, I'll play. Aside from her veering left, ala Souter, what is the other way this nomination could go wrong?
Our role in this whole affair was done on election day. We gave that power to the President of the United States. At that point, our constitutional obligations were ended.
OK, I'll play. Aside from her veering left, ala Souter, what is the other way this nomination could go wrong?
"I think it's a good thing to have people from all sorts of backgrounds [on the Court]," Scalia tells CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, as the debate rages over Miers' lack of judical experience.
Without mentioning the Bush nominee by name, the conservative legal icon said that the High Court needed someone who had never served as a judge to take the place of the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
"There is now nobody with that [non judicial] background after the death of the previous chief," Scalia laments to Bartiromo.
"And the reason that's happened, I think, is that the nomination and confirmation process has become so controversial, so politicized that I think a president does not want to give the opposition an easy excuse [to say] 'Well, this person has no judicial experience.'" Scalia concludes: "I don't think that's a good thing. I think the Byron Whites, the Lewis Powells and the Bill Rehnquists have contributed to the court even though they didn't sit on a lower federal court."
Of course he couldn't mention Miers by name, but if you believe that's not who he's talking about then you have a problem.
Yep, you're ever so FRiendly too!! Love ya
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The fact that she has a degree in law makes her qualified so the only remaining question is will she administer the law in a fair manner.
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Incorrect. There is no requirement that a USSC Justice even be a lawyer.
I see two groups in strong support of her. First, those who think that anything Bush does is ok. Second, those who think that she will be the stealth candidate to overturn, e.g. Roe v Wade.
Well, for the most part Bush does very well when he and his team think through a strategy. He/they didn't think this one through. It happens, he/we should learn and move on.
Second, most of the SC decisions that will affect me and thee over the next 20 years are not Roe v Wade, but a lot of highly technical hard issues balancing one constitutional principle against another (if they are easy they are dealt with by lower courts except for the usual raft of per curiam decisions to smack down the loonies on the 9th circuit).
Believe it or not, I do not consider Roe v. Wade to be the be-all, end-all of constitutional jurisprudence. I would like to see that particular abomination overturned, but not at the cost of even worse usurpations by the judiciary. Adherence to the actual text of the Constitution, and thereafter to the principle of consistency in law (not "stare decisis", but rather a consistency in the meaning of words, so that the law can be known in a certain way by those who must follow it).
Their JOB is to legislate. The whole advise and consent deal was to make sure that corrupt persons were not nominated. Read the constitution some time, it's only a few pages long, written quite clearly, as a matter of fact it was written so the average American could understand it. It is due to legislative and judicial interference that it's made to seem complicated.
Elitism, as in being of blue-blood birth, has no place in the USA government.
However, we are not talking birth here, but training and experience and character. Miers has neither the training nor the experience of a Thomas or Scalia. Whether she has the character to stick with her current putative conservative beliefs is questionable.
The use of the terms 'elite' and 'elitism' in the Miers discussion is empty. The other candidates aren't of elite birth or Ivy League schools. And if you want to compare to Rehnquist, you have to note that he was not of 'elite' birth, but was just damn smart and capable. Are you arguing that the Supreme Court isn't a place for the smart, capable and well trained?
Want proof? See over 20% opposed to Bush from the 2004 FR polls:
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/poll?poll=39;results=1
If its Kerry or Bush how will you vote?
| Member Opinion | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Bush | 78.5% |  |
4,251 |
| Const Party | 5.7% | |
310 |
| Kerry | 4.6% | |
249 |
| Libertarian | 4.3% | |
233 |
| Undecided | 3.3% | |
179 |
| Sit it out | 2.7% | |
148 |
| Other | 0.8% | |
46 |
| 99.9% | 5,416 | ||
A SC justice does not administer the law. A SC justice makes new law every day through decisions based on application of legal principles to the facts before the court. Except for the occasional mistake by lower courts, for the most part, every decision is new law because it requires sorting out conflicts between existing legal principles that could not be sorted out by lower courts. Where the law is clear and correctly applied, certification is denied.
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