Year: 2005

Here’s a good partisan argument:

The sensible thing for the Democrats to do is to hold their noses and vote for Miers. If Miers is rejected or withdrawn, the next nominee will be a lot worse. Bush, having alienated his right-wing base will try to mollify them by picking a hard-line right-wing fire-breather whose record will make it clear that he favors reversing Roe vs Wade. Therefore Miers is the least bad option the Democrats are going to get. In addition, if Miers is confirmed because of the votes of the Democrats while a majority of the Republicans vote against her, it will drive Bush’s right wing base absolutely beserk and make the right-wing backlash against Bush much stronger.
For the same reasons, the Democrats should insist that Miers get a fair hearing and an up and down vote, and that she should not be subjected to an ideological litmus test.

That, of course, would drive the Kossers up the wall. But the Kossers are a central reason for Republican dominance of the polity. The Miers nomination is therefore a golden opportunity for a potential Democratic presidential candidate to take on the far-left base. C’mon, Senator Bayh. He needs two core messages: he deeply values Miers’ religious faith and personal integrity and believes there should be an up-or-down vote in the whole Senate. Out-Bush Bush, vote for Miers, and then sit back and enjoy watching Sam Brownback squirm. In general, I have always given presidents the benefit of the doubt on judicial nominees. I do again here – but want to see how Miers performs in the hearings. If she’s really incompetent, we’ll find out and she should be cashiered. But if she’s just a meticulous nit-picker who believes that courts should intervene in politics as little as possible, why not vote for her? It’s not as if she’d be the first mediocre crony in the court’s history. For Dems, she’d be a lot better than most of the alternatives. And by her mere ascension to the court, as another reader points out, “these deep cleavages we are now seeing on the Right will be frozen in place, like a prehistoric fly trapped in amber.” Wedge away, Dems.

I’m trying to figure out what this can possibly mean:

The idea that there is inconsistency in preventing attacks on a nominee because of his or her religious beliefs and praising and finding value in a person’s commitment to religious beliefs is not merely absurd, it is transparently a stupid argument, and one that newspapers must report as such. Bush’s appreciation of Miers religious convictions as a “part” of her character and thus her qualification for office is simply not a religious test, whereas refusing Catholic nominees confirmation for fear their “deeply held beliefs” will inhibit their judging is.

I think this means that someone’s religious faith can be used as a qualification for public office but not as a disqualification. Heads you lose; tails we win. Here’s what Bush said:

“People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers. They want to know Harriet Miers’ background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions. And part of Harriet Miers’ life is her religion.”

I don’t think there’s much doubt from the president’s own words that Miers’ religious faith was one reason she was selected by Bush for the Supreme Court. If faith is now an explicit, publicly stated criterion for public office, then it must be equally legitimate for people to oppose the nomination entirely on religious grounds. If Miers’ evangelicalism is one of Bush’s criteria, then why should Catholics not use it against her? Or Muslims? Or atheists? The milque-toast questioning about Roberts’ faith and its possible effect on his rulings is, on this basis, legitimate. At the very least, it is now arguably legitimate – not “transparently stupid.” For the record, I think someone’s religious faith should be completely irrelevant to a nomination to SCOTUS. Hewitt doesn’t. But then I don’t believe in fusing religion and politics. Hewitt does. As long as it’s his religion.

It’s real and it’s a great accomplishment.

“These so-called movement conservatives don’t have much of a following, the ones that I’m aware of. And you just marvel, these are the senators, some of them who voted to confirm the general counsel of the ACLU to the Supreme Court, and she was voted in almost unanimously. And you say, ‘now they’re going to turn against a Christian who is a conservative picked by a conservative President and they’re going to vote against her for confirmation?’ Not on your sweet life, if they want to stay in office.” – Pat Robertson, on the 700 Club. What we’ll see, I think, is a clearer and clearer message from the White House that to oppose Miers is to oppose Christianity. It will be a subtle coded message, but it may resonate with the religious base voters if not the religious base activists – let alone the Washington conservative intelligentsia. Miers is turning out to be a real wedge within the Republican coalition.

The anti-marriage rights forces seem to be getting sleazier.

That’s Bush’s approval rate among African-Americans. No president has ever sunk that low.

The Drudge latest is fascinating, isn’t it? Miers – as recently as 1990 – was pretty much a skeptic of the conservative movement culture. Her dissing of the Federalist Society is final confirmation of her distance from the conservative legal establishment. Was Bush aware of this? Maybe. Was this really Laura’s appointment? Fund suggests that even Cheney was a doubter. All of which leads to a fascinating question: what’s the smart thing for the Dems to do now? The shrewd advice would be to stay quiet and let the GOP rip itself and the Bush dynasty to shreds. More radical advice would be to rally behind Miers. Why not? It seems highly unlikely she’ll be a Scalia, and even if she is a Scalia vote, her intellectual firepower will scarcely affect the Court. At least the Dems can insist that she be allowed a fair hearing in the Senate. They get to look bi-partisan, dignified; and their fairness will only drive the right further up the wall. The other person I’m fascinated by right now is Rove. He doesn’t seem to be that close to this decision; and his client, George W. Bush, is heading for quack-limp-quack-limp-land. Will he throw his weight behind a Brownback or Allen in opposition to Miers? Or will Bush even get rid of him? My gut tells me that Harriet’s loyalty will be rewarded by Bush. He’ll stick by her as long as she sticks by him. And she could conceivably, if still improbably, get confirmed with more Democratic votes than Republican ones.

There are now two versions of its central gist: the White House’s and Dobson’s.

A new essay of mine is now up at TNR.com.

Brooks (TimesDelete) and Noonan twist the knife still further. Drudge has his police flasher on. How beholden is the president to the Washington conservative establishment? We’re about to find out.