Free Republic

It's too early to gloat, but with speculation mounting that Judge Samuel Alito will be confirmed by the Senate, it's appropriate to reflect on how this nominee was appointed, in the first place: Conservative bloggers, pundits, and activists stopped the Harriet Meirs nomination. Should Judge Alito go on to be confirmed by the Senate, much of the credit will rightfully belong to the conservative movement. This story has been under-reported, but it is truly an historic accomplishment. Twenty years ago, before the advent of alternative media, this simply would not have been fathomable. Conservatives have long had the passion to...

Anita Hill criticized President George W. Bush's standards for selecting U.S. Supreme Court justices, arguing Wednesday night that nominees are selected based on their ability to further his political agenda.

Harriet is so last week. Let's try to move on. It's nicer when we don't fight. With Alito, there's nothing to fight over.

"The conservative screamers who shot down [Harriet] Miers can argue that they were fighting only for a 'qualified' nominee. . . . But whatever the rationale, the fact is that they short-circuited the confirmation process by raising hell with Bush. . . . A cabal of outsiders--a lynching squad of right-wing journalists, self-sanctified religious and moral organizations, and other frustrated power-brokers--[rolled] over the president they all ostensibly support." --David Broder, Washington Post, Nov. 2       Nothing like the calming tones of The Dean to bring context and a needed sense of perspective to the proceedings. In his comments on Sunday's "Meet the Press" and in his...

WELL, THAT'S MORE LIKE IT. In Judge Sam Alito, President Bush has chosen a more plausible High Court nominee. Make that a much more plausible nominee. His legal qualifications are exceptional, his character widely attested. And having spent 15 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, he has demonstrated an approach to judging that clearly identifies him as a judicial conservative. Two points are worth noting on day one of this nomination. The first is Alito's legal experience. His many years on the Third Circuit mean that he knows the labor of an appellate judge,...

As President Bush prepares to make a new appointment to the Supreme Court, the lessons of the failed Miers nomination are still being absorbed. One that deserves study is how a lightning-fast news cycle, a flat-footed defense and the growth of new media such as talk radio and blogs sank Ms. Miers's chances even before the megabuck special-interest groups could unload their first TV ad. Ms. Miers herself has told friends that she was astonished at how the Internet became a conveyor belt for skeptical mainstream media reports on her in addition to helping drive the debate.

Bush Approval Rating Up 5 Points Since Miers Withdrawal

As President Bush prepares to make a new appointment to the Supreme Court, the lessons of the failed Miers nomination are still being absorbed. One that deserves study is how a lightning-fast news cycle, a flat-footed defense and the growth of new media such as talk radio and blogs sank Ms. Miers's chances even before the megabuck special-interest groups could unload their first TV ad. Ms. Miers herself has told friends that she was astonished at how the Internet became a conveyor belt for skeptical mainstream media reports on her in addition to helping drive the debate. The rapidity with...

The last group President Bush thought he had to worry about opposing Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers was the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill. But it turns out the man most responsible for taking Miers down was an insider, the G.O.P.'s fourth-ranked Senator, Jon Kyl (rhymes with smile). The second-term conservative from Arizona argued at length in meetings with majority leader Bill Frist and G.O.P. whip Mitch McConnell that the Miers nomination was too risky ideologically and too costly politically, sources on Capitol Hill tell TIME. From Day One, says a G.O.P. staff member, "[Kyl] was trying to kill Miers."...

The Bush administration's second-term bear market has bottomed outLAST WEEK THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S second-term bear market bottomed out. On Monday, Bush nominated as the next Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who of all the leading candidates will be the central banker least hostile to tax cuts and least likely to direct monetary policy to any end other than combating inflation. At the end of the week, the Commerce Department announced that economic growth in the third quarter had been 3.8 percent, suggesting that, thanks in large part to Bush's supply-side tax cuts, our economy may remain strong enough to overcome...

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate's minority leader, said on ABC's "This Week" today that Bush's nomination of Harriet MIers was not a mistake and he believes she could have done well in a nomination hearing. He urged the president not to be too quick to move to the right on a nomination and to steer toward the middle.

The White House decided to employ a politically-palatable, pundit-prescribed exit strategy with the withdrawal of Harriet Miers. Because of that, Miss Miers is no longer a nominee to the United States Supreme Court, and much of America may believe the Bush Administration's contention that she withdrew over a request for documents. In actuality, she withdrew because her 1993 pro-abortion speech came to light, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back for the great Dr. James Dobson, Senator Sam Brownback, Senator John Thune, and any members of the conservative base who had reserved judgment up to that point....

The choice of Harriet Miers to be nominated to the Supreme Court, and her subsequent withdrawal, shows that caution is sometimes the most dangerous policy.She was obviously chosen cautiously as a "stealth" nominee -- someone without a paper trail or a judicial record that could ignite controversy -- in hopes of avoiding a confirmation fight that the Senate Republicans had the votes to win, but had neither the unity nor the guts required to make victory certain.Harriet Miers was a choice made from political weakness. Now she is gone but the political weakness remains. So celebrations in conservative quarters may...

After Miers, the Right Is Expecting More By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Published: October 30, 2005 In his two choices for the Supreme Court so far, President Bush has tapped what some conservatives called "stealth" nominees: jurists without a clear record of legal opinions on abortion rights or other contentious social issues. But with the announcement of a third nominee to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor expected as early as Monday, prominent conservatives said they were confident that this time would be different. They argued that the reaction against the nomination of Harriet E. Miers had proven the perils of such...

My, My! Miers Morphs Carol Turoff October 28, 2005 Since the withdrawal of Harriet Meirs’s nomination to fill the O’Connor supreme court vacancy, spin has centered on the enormity of the conservative clout. It is no secret that many were dissatisfied with her lack of demonstrable qualifications or even an inkling of her judicial philosophy. Service as the Texas lottery director, a stint as an at-large city council representative and personal lawyer to George W. Bush is hardly the background one expects for a U.S. Supreme Court justice. But those meager qualifications alone were not enough to energize the onslaught...

WASHINGTON - President Bush's bad week may yet prove the administration's great turning point. None of the reverses need be fatal; each of them contains an opportunity to move back on to a more successful path. Everything depends on the wisdom, self-discipline, and perspective of the President himself. Yesterday's indictments of Lewis Libby are one opportunity. For while Mr. Libby now stands in serious legal peril, the broader administration has been exonerated of intentional wrongdoing. From the start, there have been two competing theories of what happened in the CIA leak scandal. Call them the "big" theory and the "little"...

WASHINGTON -- Managers of the failed Harriet Miers nomination for the Supreme Court set the actual day of her demise as Oct. 18, when conservative Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sam Brownback of Kansas called for the release of her work product as White House counsel to justify her confirmation.  Miers's strategists at that point felt the game was over because of inability to fight congressional demands for documents that the White House would not release. This was compounded when her visits to Republican senators went so badly that further sessions had to be suspended.  A footnote:...

Whether it was an accident, or a sheer stroke of genius, the historical record of what nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court will mean to the nation may look very different than what most liberals would like to see. For the last five weeks, the Chuck Schumers and Pat Leahys of the universe have driven to their Georgetown brownstones and chuckled to themselves as to how the conservatives in America could have ended up in such disarray. Over cocktails, you could see the arrogance slipping into the conversation. They believed themselves to be watching the self-destruction of the conservative...

'We are proud of her'07:26 AM CDT on Friday, October 28, 2005 By KIMBERLY DURNAN / DallasNews.com Putting their political leanings and ideologies aside, students and professors at Southern Methodist University had taken pride in the idea that one of their own might become one of the most important judicial decision-makers in the nation. On Thursday, their hearts were heavy as news spread that the woman who had attended SMU as an undergraduate and law student had pulled out of the contentious battle for a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court. *snip* Joseph F. Kobylka, an associate professor in the...

For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for usAn eternal glory that far outweighs them all.So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. II Corinthians 4: 17-18