the nominee formerly known as Harriet Miers
Taking in the morning news the other day I heard that Harriet Meirs has turned in her letter of resignation
Harriet Miers Withdraws Nomination Washington Post --
Miers Withdraws Nomination for Supreme Court - New York Times.
By then it wasn't really a surprise. At the time of the middle weekend
(15-16 Oct) I thought the nomination was going through. That
apparently was just the moment when her opponents were pausing to take
a collective breath.
Then it came on again. More columns by Krauthammer, Kristal, Frum, Will and others
Conservatives Escalate Opposition to Miers . Negative tv ad campaigns and web sites dedicated to ending her nomination
George Who? - It's starting to be cool to defy Bush. By Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and Dahlia Lithwick.
Last weekend Sen. Schumer looked across the aisle and decided the
republicans had put themselves in such disagreement that they no longer
had the votes to issue a positive recommendation out of committee or
out on the floor
Schumer: Few Senators Now Favor Miers For Court - New York Times.
This, weeks away from her even coming before the committee. Speeches from
her days in Texas fatally indicated that she might think that
discretion lay on the side of privacy of the individual
In Speeches From 1990s, Clues About Miers Views .
Leaving aside the question of how much of this nomination was a good
idea Why did it fail? I still feel that her primary
failing was that she was simply too close to the president. The other
objections that she lacked gravitas, is not a 'constitutionalist',
didn't go to an A-list law school, was not a judge already, well,
name your own category. All of these come to the table with
preconceptions - some subtler than others, that beg their
question. Only these people can read their own souls and tell
what their questions really was. I will allow it to be subsumed by:
'this person was not on our list and what we want is someone from our
list' The important determinants of who might make a good justice
relate primarily to temperament. I never got the sense that Miers
was not intelligent, or could not discus things well, even if she
wasn't a constitutional scholar. And I categorically reject the idea
that I must prostrate myself before the likes of Justice Scalia to
learn what the constitution means. If it requires a delphic priesthood,
then it is not worth the paper it is printed on.
If someone with more astute political sensibilities had been
watching over this, either this nomination would not have
gone forward publicly (not come up at all), or it would have been
handled more adroitly and met with successes. Certainly someone should
have stepped in to prevent the spectacle of the right Borking their own
candidate (Borking Miers),
and not because she wasn't conservative but because she wasn't
conservative enough. Now they can do little more than lamely and
transparently spin; attempting deny that the painfully obvious never
happened.
One commentator, Thursday, one of the ones un-containably
ecstatic that the nominee had withdrawn, spoke of the President as
being [freed from being] "Trapped by Gender." By this he seems to have
meant that having got that McGuffin of a nomination out of the way the
president could dispense with the the notion that it might be best if a
woman went on the court as Justice O'Conner came off. Or that it is
even possible that the court in its activities could be improved by
having women on it at all. That anything other that pure non-gendered
reason ever enters into the courts decisions. Yet those who fight
what they call identity politics the hardest, are so identifiable by it
that they confirm in their ardor that which they deny. They seek to
preserve a status quo that identifies in all its processes at every
turn.
Slate had a mini beat on the nomination. One of the things
Emily Bazelon and others tried to examine is why conservatives were not
taking the message the White House was desperately trying to pass to
them
Stand Down - Miers signals to the right, uselessly. By Emily Bazelon.
Not taking it because they no longer cared to be put off with coded
affirmations that were not as clear to their foes as to themselves
Code Blue - What the Miers withdrawal means for abortion code-speak. By Dahlia Lithwick.
This eulogy to political litmous language may be a little premature.
The social conservatives may feel that their day has arrived, together
with other conservatives they might feel scorned by past nominations.
The President must retain sensitivity; however, to his role as the
party leader and to the hundreds of regional political fights of his
fellow legislators.
In the end, as things went, she simply did too little to help
herself. It seems unlikely that this nomination was genuinely part of
her own ambition, which for an effective justice it needs to be.
In stalling and crashing Harriet Miers' nomination the right
possibly does not even understand what it has done. I doubt they can
answer with one voice whether it was conservative elites or their rank
and file, social conservatives or the fiscal/property rights crowd that
forced the change on the administration. Whether, in either event, it
was driven more by their hopes or their fears. The problem for the
White House is that no one person can satisfy a base that is more
fractured than it admits
Danforth Criticizes Christian Sway in GOP - Yahoo! News.
The question now is whether to try a more skillful and procedural version of the previous strategy
With Miers Out, Focus Shifts to Next Nominee.
Which had the goals of consolidating conservative voting patterns on
the court, while not provoking a divisive confirmation battle. For this
the candidate, while not needing to be the burning star of admiration
to the myriad persuasions, must still exhibit particular qualities in
careful measure. He or she must inspire confidence. Whether by
ideological reliability or judicious potential is no matter. The
candidate must match this without obvious negatives or burrs to their
candidacy, by either positive evidence of winning personality and good
works, or by the complete absence of information of any kind.
The other direction is to deliberately set the stage for a
political Ragnarok. A test of the balancing point in American politics.
This may reflect a desire for a show of force and for polarization of
society, irrespective of whether they prevail on this day. The
president will try to parse this closely but he will come down on the
side of the conservatives
With Miers out, what's Plan B? | csmonitor.com, Krauthammer, Will and others have made it clear that when they turn the handle - the monkey must dance.
These figures of the right justify their actions by pretending
to principle. Claiming they want more than the promise of a vote result.
They claim to want a philosophical turn in their justice, and
coherence. These thing are not necessarily synonymous and not
necessarily what they really want. A truly philosophical - questioning
and open mind - will produce results that more than occasionally depart
from partisanship. With 'coherence' they indicate rather that they
desire an axiomatic approach. This is not philosophy. It is not part of
the highest jurisprudence. It marks rather a desire for consistent and
predictable result.
The fact is, that this is the choice of a conservative
republican president. For the left; nitpicking, filibustering , and
kvetching about nominees seems weak and negative. Because it is. If the
democratic party wants a choice that will make them happy they ought
elect a democratic president. Much of the the left insists on going off
and supporting green or Naderite candidates to preserve their 'purity'
and to supposedly accomplish the critical task of signaling that the
two party system is dysfunctional, and that there are no real
differences between the parties.
Here is your difference, a court of reactionaries.
---
I see we have a new nominee now: Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Judge on the 3rd circuit court of appeals. Already the choice
just seems distressingly traditional. Wheres the surprise, wheres the
drama?
11:55:14 PM  ;;
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