Posted on 10/17/2005 3:17:09 PM PDT by Map Kernow
Harriet Mierss confirmation hearings are about to begin, so we may be on the verge of learning something meaningful about the presidents choice to replace Justice Sandra Day OConnor on the Supreme Court. Or maybe we wont. We havent learned much since she was named, and one suspects there might not be all that much more out there.
I dont know enough about Ms. Miers even to guess at her qualifications for the job to which she has been appointed. Ive heard good and bad things about her from those whove dealt with her, and Ive read reams of opinion about her, but I still have to count myself as skeptical, as nothing Ive heard thus far even begins to convince me that she belongs on the Supreme Court.
The case for Miers is simple. The president knows her and likes her. Shes a hard worker and a woman who did well as a lawyer in Texas, is devoted to the president and has performed loyally as a White House staffer. Oh, and there is one other thing. Ms. Miers regularly attends church and apparently takes her religion seriously. This, according to White House arm twisters, tells us that she would vote on the court in a way that would please social and religious conservatives.
In fact, it tells us no such thing.
Its nice to know that Ms. Miers is a regular church-goer, and nicer still that she is devout, but we have been told time and again by the same people selling her candidacy today that a nominees religious views need not shape his or her judicial decisions. When liberals questioned whether John Roberts would, as a Catholic, be able to decide cases involving abortion and euthanasia without being unduly influenced by the views of his church, they were assured in no uncertain terms that his views of the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court, rather than his personal religious views, would prove determinative in such cases.
They were right then and wrong now. One can find devout liberals and conservatives sitting side by side in pews every Sunday. As a practical matter, while it is true that regular attendance may, as numerous polls suggest, indicate a greater statistical likelihood that one will vote Republican, such attendance tells us little about any individual attendees politics and absolutely nothing about how Harriet Miers might vote on cases that come before her as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.
When a Supreme Court justice looks at a case, conservatives and most other Americans would hope that he or she would ask how the Founders might have viewed it in light of the meaning of document they crafted rather than how their minister, priest or the president who appointed them might want it to turn out. We dont know how Harriet Miers views the Constitution or the role of a Supreme Court justice, and most of us are waiting to find out.
Still, I have from the beginning been willing to grant that, since few of us know much about the lady, she may be all the president and his advisers claim. She is, after all, a smart woman and a fairly successful lawyer who may well have thought deeply, though privately, about constitutional questions in spite of the rather mundane chores for which shes billed her clients over the years, but it is going to be up to her to demonstrate it.
What is most troubling about this whole affair, however, is the way the administration has gone about trying to demonize conservatives who have raised questions about Ms. Miers. It began from day one to attack personally the motives, loyalty and judgment of anyone who questioned the wisdom of the nomination. Since then, the ad hominem attacks on Mierss conservative critics have been unconscionably heavy-handed and will haunt the president regardless of how the nomination fight turns out.
Most conservatives have stood with Bush from the beginning. Those of us who know him like him. Weve swallowed policies we might otherwise have objected to because weve believed that he and those around him are themselves conservatives trying to do the right thing against sometimes terrible odds. Weve been there for him because weve considered ourselves part of his team.
No more.
From now on, this administration will find it difficult to muster support on the right without explaining why it should be forthcoming. The days of the blank check have ended because no thinking conservative really wants to be part of a team that requires marching in lock step without question or thought, even if it is headed by the president of the United States.
Certainly. Some very intelligent people don't write well, or are dyslexic or something like that.
She'll have plenty of people to help her write opinions.
But she could very well be articulate in verbal speech. I've seen that combination too many times to think that it's a rarity.
A poll on FR is not scientific or representative of even what most people at FR think.
"If GWB was going to be a strong LEADER on this he would have submitted a strong conservative nominee with a long track record and been prepared to FIGHT for that nominee instead of trying to sneak another stealth nominee thru."
Suppose he had done that. How long do you think it would have been before they were actually confirmed?
Well, the reason I have always given for letting Bush get away with these questionable activities is that he needed to do it in order to get the really important things done, like making good judicial appointments. That was my bottom line.
Now that he has nominated a doubtfully conservative, undistinguished and almost unknown second-rater for the Supreme Court, it puts everything else into question too.
We all paid a lot one way or another to get to this point, and we don't appreciate getting kicked in the teeth just as the goal is within reach.
This is an excellent point.
Has this President ever fought, even once, for a specifically conservative position? And I mean it in the sense that he was a true leader, one who went up against the odds because of principle?
A good lawyer must be an EXTREMELY articulate person verbally and in writing.
Are we on the clock ? Another Souter would just sail through the Senate. Is that what you want ?
We wouldn't want to waste your time, now would we ?
And the party blames the voter after the fact. The GOP lost in 1992, not becuase of Ross Perot. Perot represents a failure on the part of the GOP to attract more votes than any other party.
Anyway, what you said was well said. Don't be surprized to be called names for it. That rubber truncheon thing, you know?
I would agree with the first, but not with the second.
That's what "legal aids" are for.
Legal AIDES, not aids.
An empty Supreme Court seat is infinitely preferable to one filled by an awful justice.
"That's not the point.
An empty Supreme Court seat is infinitely preferable to one filled by an awful justice."
How would you feel about an 8 person supreme court where the next President has an immediate chance to name a justice?
What is most troubling about this whole affair, however, is the way the administration has gone about trying to demonize conservatives who have raised questions about Ms. Miers. It began from day one to attack personally the motives, loyalty and judgment of anyone who questioned the wisdom of the nomination.
no thinking conservative really wants to be part of a team that requires marching in lock step without question or thought, even if it is headed by the president of the United States.
Sandra Day O'Connor, whatever her faults-and they were maifold-was at the very least, committed to the concept of federalism.
That should be the de minimus requirement made of all Republican appointees to the federal judiciary at any level.
Do we even know that much about Miers?
I am certain that not only would she have been incapable of authoring the blistering dissent written by O'Connor in Kelo, but have the sneaking suspicion that she would have been on the other side, were she in the place of Sandra Day O'Connor.
Considering the fact that her only enthusiastic backers-aside from members of the Democratic Caucus-seem to be the corporate benefactors of the Bush administration, I find it hard to believe that she is irrevocably opposed to the exploitation of eminent domain.
Doesn't Bush get another go if we block Miers? How does blocking her mean that he gets no more chances to nominate a judge?
If a legal aide did Miers writing, did it go out the door without her approval and sign off ? So obviously this is Mier's idea of good writing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.