Posted on 10/20/2005 1:27:08 PM PDT by Stellar Dendrite
The Miers Support Team: Gloomy and Demoralized Now they’re discussing stopping her visits to the Senate.
Strategists working with the White House in support of the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers are becoming increasingly demoralized and pessimistic about the nomination's prospects on Capitol Hill in the wake of Miers's meetings with several Republican and Democratic senators. On a conference call held this morning, they even discussed whether Miers should simply stop visiting with lawmakers, lest any further damage be done — and so that time spent in such get-acquainted sessions will not cut into Miers's intensive preparation for her confirmation hearing.
The strategists discuss issues on a twice-weekly conference call led by Leonard Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society who has taken leave to help the White House shepherd the nomination through the Senate. A number of people who have taken part in the calls described the conversations to National Review Online. None wanted to be identified, because they do not want to openly oppose the White House or defy loyalists like Leo who are trying hard to defend Miers. Nevertheless, they paint a grim portrait of morale among those close to the nomination.
"The number of participants is declining," says one knowledgeable source. "With Roberts, these calls occurred five or six or seven times a week. Pretty early on, the calls on Miers were scaled back to twice a week. That says something in and of itself."
"It's been a gradual descent into almost silence," says a second source of the calls. "The meetings with the senators are going terribly. On a scale of one to 100, they are in negative territory. The thought now is that they have to end....Obviously the smart thing to do would be to withdraw the nomination and have a do-over as soon as possible. But the White House is so irrational that who knows? As of this morning, there is a sort of pig-headed resolve to press forward, cancel the meetings with senators if necessary, and bone up for the hearings."
"They are going to be keeping the meetings that they've already scheduled," says a third source. "But they have scheduled murder boards today from 12 to 5. She has to focus on her hearing. And the questionnaire that wasn't filled out, to me that's an indication [the White House] hasn't done the vetting. She has to spend a lot of time discussing stuff that should have been done before. So between those two things — finishing the questionnaire and preparing for the hearing, which is going to be make or break — they prefer to put her time into that."
"In the early days, there were people on the call who tried to give facile defenses of Miers, and they were immediately shot down," says a fourth source. "And by the way, those defenses weren't as insulting as the White House line — no way would they have done the 'sexist, elitist' line."
In summary, says the first source, "People have been looking for ways to support this. There are a lot of us who would like to find a reason to be encouraged. Every time I try to accommodate myself to this nomination, folks at the White House say idiotic things that piss me off, like that spin on Rove's part about her supposed deep involvement in judicial selection for three years, which is just not accurate."
"Demoralization and pessimism?" the source continues. "That's been a constant. We're in the various stages of grief."
Every day brings more embarrassment.
If this woman is one-tenth as loyal as they accuse her of being, she'll withdraw.
if this is true (if....) seems to signal that perhaps she is done. Seems the best course of action would be to withdraw.
A blog--the Anchoress--predicted Miers was a smokecreen, would not even make it to the hearings. I guess the strategy would be...W tried to get a "moderate" on the bench, the base revolted, so now he has to nominate a "conservative" to please the base. not a bad strategy.
You are so correct. Bush won't change. This is going to be the biggest farcical hearing in decades. She & Bush are gonna be laughing stocks -even from his own party and he is toast for the next 3 yrs. How sad - How pathetic!
Has anyone on FR called the 7 RINOs and explicitly asked them if they would support someone they might think is an extremist, like Luttig?
"And the nominees used to be at least moderately qualified."
You must be one of those elitist-meritocricists who think a Justice should have experience and moderately-good writing skills.
Hey, she ran a lottery! That's like a court. No? It's not like she ran the Arabian Horse association.
Yah, like he looked into Putin's eyes and saw his "soul"...
Please.
Unless the President is asking her to stay the course... if he believes that this is the way things must go, all the factual evidence to the contrary in the world won't change his mind.
The problem is that if she actually gets to the hearings, this could be a debacle.
I can just see the news story in about 6 months where the Supreme Court cancels oral arguments because some unnamed Justice keeps muttering under her breath "Damn, I didn't know that!" and keeps rustling through her copy of Modern Constitutional Law: Rotunda to try and figure out what everyone is talking about.
This is indeed grim news for Bush. And I'm not surprised. In fact, it sounds as if matters are much worse than I even thought. It's time to pull this nomination and go back to the drawing board for the White House.
At the risk of being redundant, I'll repeat what I've said before because I continue to be stunned. Who/how did this woman get nominated? How does the White House go from a wise pick (Roberts) to Miers? Sounds like the poor woman is going to look and sound terribly dificient in the hearings.
IF she can spell meritocricist (and use it in a sentence)without coaching, I'll tone down my objections.
My God, this whole thing is like watching New Orleans flood. Nothing to be done but plan the recovery from a disaster of biblical proportions.
"If you were the most brilliant jurist in history you wouldn't be going through what she is going through. Witness John Roberts, easily confirmed with no controversy."
Well put.
Ironic ain't it? A conservative publication Borking a conservative President's nominee. This reads like the NYTimes.
Conservatives would be happy to support her if we had some solid evidence that she will be a conservative vote. She might be the most conservative judge in the history of the supreme court but we have little to no evidence of that. We've been too badly burned by gambling in the past.
"Need some beverage for your bunker?"
It could be a long duration underground for some of the die hards.
>this whole thing
Not mine, just borrowing.
Quagmier.
You'd think Bork's critiques and judgements would carry some weight.
She has to withdraw, she can't go on like this, she'll be eviscerated during the hearings, as you have to be pretty nimble to give a non answer answer, as the hearings require. Or she falls into some gotcha's.
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