Posted on 10/11/2005 5:30:20 AM PDT by conservativecorner
'It's not a rebellion, sire: It's a revolution." With those words, the duke of La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt broke the news to Louis XVI that the Bastille had fallen. Looking back on the events of the past eight days, I wonder whether the Bush White House does not feel the same way.
The President's decision to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor with his White House counsel and former personal attorney, the underwhelming Harriet Miers, has detonated an uprising within the President's own party.
Conservative commentators Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, George Will, Patrick Buchanan, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Michelle Malkin and many, many others have condemned the choice.
Washington's tight-knit and usually close-mouthed network of conservative jurists and lawyers is dismayed by Miers' thin record and weak abilities. One Republican lawyer told me of a briefing session to prepare Miers to enter into her duties as White House Counsel a year ago. A panel of lawyers who had served in past Republican White Houses was gathered together. After a couple of hours of questions and answers, Miers left to return to the office. There was a silence. Then somebody hopefully piped up: "Maybe if we can find her a really strong deputy ..."
The anger of conservative legalists and opinion leaders is echoed by rank-and-file Republicans. Last week, I asked readers of the conservative National Review Online Web site to tell me how they would vote on the nomination as U.S. senators: They voted 5-1 to reject the nomination. And while the aye votes were usually expressed in cautious and uncertain terms ("I think we just have to trust the President"), the nays were furious ("not just no -- hell no!")
These impressions are confirmed by opinion polls. A CBS poll conducted last week found that the Miers nomination was the most unpopular since Robert Bork's in 1987. Gallup found that while 77% of self-identified conservatives had supported the Roberts' choice, only 58% supported Miers. Both those polls were taken before at the very beginning of last week's spasm of negative media commentary.
CBS last week also released new presidential approval numbers, based on a survey conducted October 3-5. Bush is down to 37%, the lowest presidential approval rating since the Carter years. That number is buoyed, though, by the President's continued high approval rating among conservatives: 80%.
But Oct. 3 was the date that the Miers nomination was announced. As conservatives digest their disappointment and betrayal, their approval of the President is likely to decline. It's hard to say how powerful this effect will be overall, but here's one clue: A poll Monday of 200 right-of-centre bloggers by the RightWingNews.com Web site found that 49% regarded the appointment as a "bad or terrible" decision. Only 9% rated it "good or excellent." And while 4% of the bloggers said that the decision raised their opinion of President Bush, 53% made them view the President less favourably.
While it would seem unlikely that conservatives overall would react as strongly as these intensely political bloggers, the trend and tendency are both clear.
The problem is made worse by the White House's publicity campaign in defence of Miers. Advocates of the appointment have accused critics of "sexism" and "elitism" -- charges that have been echoed by left-wing Democrats like Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski. There are probably few tactics less likely to impress a conservative audience -- or more likely to convince that audience that Miers is indeed the unqualified crony her critics say she is.
The only thing worse may be the White House's second talking point: emphasizing Miers' personal qualities. Former White House aide David Kuo tells this story in an op-ed posted on the beliefnet.com Web site:
"Harriet used to keep a humidor full of M&Ms in her West Wing office. It wasn't a huge secret. She'd stash some boxes of the coveted red, white, and blue M&Ms in specially made boxes bearing George W. Bush's reprinted signature. Her door was always open and the M&Ms were always available. I dared ask one time why they were there. Her answer: 'I like M&Ms and I like sharing.' "
This anecdote almost invites the retort: Well why don't we go all the way and put Barney the purple dinosaur on the court?
More seriously, it disregards and insults the seriousness with which conservatives have worked for three decades to bring change to America's high-handed courts. There is no domestic issue that conservatives care about more, nothing for which individual conservatives have made greater personal sacrifices than to get ready for the day when a conservative president and a Republican Senate would at last hold the power to fill that crucial swing seat on the court.
President Bush's decision to award that seat to his personal attorney in thanks for her years of service to himself personally has enraged his political base. Ann Coulter expressed that rage in her inimitably astringent way two days after the nomination was announced: "Being on the Supreme Court isn't like winning a 'Best Employee of the Month' award. However nice, helpful, prompt and tidy she is, Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on The West Wing, let alone to be a real one."
Offending your supporters has real-world consequences. With one grave misjudgment, George W. Bush has shattered the coalition that brought and returned him to power in 2000 and 2004.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same things and expecting a different outcome."
-attributed to Albert Einstein
I didn't ask a question. You must be confused.
Again, we should've pulled the trigger when we had a chance on the constitutional option. I don't know why the president wouldn't knock heads and go to the matresses and get it done, because he was stronger then than he is now. Not that he's impotent, but the reality is that in a second term, any president, regardless of party, becomes more of a lame duck literally with every passing day. I know why Frist wouldn't, he has the backbone of a chocolate eclair, to steal a line from T. Roosevelt.
Of course like Bush. He is the "compassionate conservative" who nominated her.
Well, we should know.
We will have to trust GWB. The inability to trust the president appears to be the largest drawback so far, eh?
As I've said before, trusting politicians is for the feeble-minded and Russians.
I don't see much difference at this point.
I'd like to hear what the pundits think.
I'd like to see each pundit hand out a ranked list of their top 5 preferred candidates and have them specifically tell us why they choose those candidates and how they would label the "judicial philosophy" of each of those candidates.
They won't. She's toast and will withdraw.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Well, the Republicans aren't doing anything with them. Except, perhaps, for amassing power, squandering money and appointing cronies.
You're right. O'Conner is leaving. It' the Old Woman's Seat. And after all, how many old-woman cronies does Bush have to choose from?
His hands were tied. So we all just need to shut up, pay up and reelect.
Yep. Now. Today. Before he does something even more stupid.
Suppose he does not do it? What do you want to do?
Ensure the Senate throws her out on her ass.
vote Democrat? Stay home? or vote for a third party? F***ing do it and stop whining.
Ok, then. Will do.
Bush Jr. is doing exactly what Bush Sr. did - pissing off his party and destroying many years of work and progress. Not that he's done a hell of a lot to fulfill all his campaign promises up to now.
Correct, all the way up to the Oval Office sometimes.
I just think the political pressure to dump her will become overwhelming this week and even Jr. will realize he's toast along with her if he stays stubborn on a stupid choice.
One down, one to go.
People who have sincerely confronted their own beliefs and failings, can be firmly committed to conservatism.
Clarence Thomas, "I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American," 29 July 1998
In the final weeks of my seminary days, shortly after Dr. King's death, I found myself becoming consumed by feelings of animosity and anger. I was disenchanted with my church and my country. I was tired of being in the minority, and I was tired of turning the other cheek. I, along with many blacks, found ways to protest and try to change the treatment we received in this country.... I was being consumed by the circumstances in which I found myself, circumstances that I saw as responding only to race.
My feelings were reaffirmed during the summer of 1968 as a result of the lingering stench of racism in Savannah and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. No matter what the reasons were, I closed out the '60s as one angry young man waiting on the revolution that I was certain would soon come...The intensity of my feelings was reinforced by other events of the late '60s: the riots, the marches, the sense that something had to be done, done quickly to resolve the issue of race. In college there was an air of excitement, apprehension and anger. We started the Black Students Union. We protested. We worked in the Free Breakfast Program. We would walk out of school in the winter of 1969 in protest.
Of course it will. I mean, one of the defining qualities of his Presidency is how he has so often reveresed course based on polls and public pressure. That's why we left Iraq 4 months ago. /sarcasm.
"Again, we should've pulled the trigger when we had a chance on the constitutional option. I don't know why the president wouldn't knock heads and go to the matresses and get it done, because he was stronger then than he is now."
If I recall correctly, right about the time the whole issue wasd available to vote on, we decided that doing SOMETHING to save Terri Schiavo was far more important than getting nominees appointed to the Supreme Court.
Neither Frum's grousing nor Litte Ray's torpor has any bearing on whether Miers is a suitable candidate for the Supreme Court.
If Frum was cheerily positive and Little Ray a dynamo of activity Miers would still be a mediocrity and a cipher.
How about trying to convince us that Miers is a pick that advances the conservative cause?
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