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.
I'm convinced that Miers will be a positive addition to the court. And I think that having Republicans self-destruct over this -- prior to even having hearings -- is unwise.
spoken like a man fired by his boss, who has nothing bigger to worry about but writing 600 words for an article every Tues or a speech once a month. Try getting elected to the school board then tell us about making decisions. Man I hope some of these pundits get the same treatment as the MSM regarding the Katrina issue.
How did ya feel concerning Kennedy, Souter and the rest of the home run conservaives who turned out to be closet liberals?
"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."
I am not offended. I think GWB knows more about his choice than anyone else and it is HIS choice.
"The systematic denial of up or down votes on judicial nominees is a new phenomenon. .... In one recent poll, 82 percent said the president's nominees deserve an up or down vote on the Senate floor.."May 9, 2005, William Kristol
I don't have too many concerns about Miers but her feelings on the international court do concern me.
I totally agree with this. You RINO's better listen up, this rebuking of the Presidents choice for SCOTUS is a good thing. Face it, George is sleep walking, he needs something to wake him up. Maybe this will do it.
Close your eyes and repeat after me Dorothy...Meirs is a conservative...Meirs is a conservative...Meirs is a conservative. It's not true of course, but it will make you feel better till conservatives take it in the shorts with this nominee.
Three questions for Frum:
1. Did you leave the White House voluntarily?
2. If the answer to #1 is "no," what role did Ms. Miers play in your departure?
3. Have you thought of spicing up your screeds with MORE COWBELL?
Is there any indication when the hearings will start?
George H.W. Bush did not know David Souter. Souter was recommended to him by others. He got burned.
George W. Bush did not want to get burned. He did want a nominee who could get on the bench. He chose someone who he KNEW. Someone he TRUSTED. This is the president who put Janice Rogers Brown on the Federal bench. He didn't want to get burned by someone he didn't know. So he chose someone very reliable. Someone he truly knew.
She is the anti-Souter.
The other 18% are GOP and DEM Senators, and the President, who acquiesed to the "political reality of not being able to get nominations past the gang of 14" without so much as a wimper.
Frum is the kid that nobody wanted on their team. All he can do is stand on the sidelines while he watches the others play.
and I am convinced that if the she really was, the best person the president could find, then he didn't look any further than arm's reach. At a time when Bush should be showing strong leadership, he capitulates and give the 'Rats a mulligan.
Reagan started eating jelly beans when he gave up smoking in the early 1960's. On his first day as governor of California, candymaker Henry Rowland gave Reagan a big jar of jelly beans, which Reagan put on the Cabinet Room table. That was the beginning of a long tradition of passing out jelly beans during Cabinet meetings. "We can hardly start a meeting or make a decision without passing around the jar of jelly beans," he told Rowland.Reagan also once said that, "You can tell a lot about a fella's character by whether he picks out all of one color or just grabs a handful." Sometime later he remarked, "Some political figures have endured in history as lions or conquerors or something equally impressive. It's a little frightening to think California history might record us as jelly beans."
When Reagan was elected President in 1980, Henry Rowland told reporters, "There will be jelly beans in the White House, that's all I can say." True to form, Reagan kept a crystal jar full of his favorite jelly beans (Jelly Belly's) for Cabinet meetings and encouraged his department chiefs to eat them when they needed energy.
Miers appears to have been drawn from the D team. Being Bush's buddy just doesn't cut it. Time to admit it was a mistake and nominate a bold, brilliant, originalist, strict-constructionist constitutional scholar.
Hugh Hewitt was spinning like a top last night, saying that Miers has impeccable credentials as a lawyer (huh? Lottery commission?) and that being an originalist is "easy" - that reading the constitution and interpreting it is not a big deal.
What really galled me, though, was that he trotted out the old "well get ready for a Hillary White House and a Hillary senate!"
That's great logic, Hugh. So let's not act like a conservative party for fear that a democrat will be in office in 2007? At this point, what the hell is the difference?
7 of the 9 were chosen by Republican Presidents who told us not to worry. The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome.
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