Monday
October 10
EITHER WAY, IT'S A CRAP SHOOT: John Fund inadvertently
makes the case in favor of Harriet Miers this morning by pointing
out that conservatives
have been burned on SCOTUS appointments by every Republican president
since Eisenhower.
Presumably,
all these nominations were made with the best of intentions; namely
to seat qualified conservative-leaning justices on the court with
the intention of either maintaining its balance or shifting it
to the right. Yet conservatives got Blackmun
from Nixon, Kennedy
& O'Connor
from Reagan, and Souter
from Bush 41.
The point,
of course, is that the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice is
inherently a crap shoot. Miers may not be a movement conservative,
but she could easily end up being another reliably conservative
vote on the Court similar to Rehnquist or White. And John Roberts,
the nominee conservatives just bent over backward to defend based
on little more than intellectual pedigree and indefatigable charm,
could just as easily turn out to be another Anthony Kennedy. Or
it could be the reverse. There are no guarantees.
Does that
mean the court needs a crony? No. But don't be misled by breathless
recitations of Federalist
No. 76. Only a fool would claim that Miers has "no other
merit" to her nomination besides being a friend of Bush.
Miers has a record of accomplishment and it's now up to her to
demonstrate and defend her record and her views in front of the
Judiciary Committee and the country. That's exactly how it should
be.
The reason
the Miers nomination was a bad one, in my opinion, is because
it needlessly split the Republican base in two. Bush made the
entire process (and by default the prospect of enacting the rest
of his agenda) much more difficult than it had to be, and his
presidency may suffer as a result.
In the end
it may work out that Bush did conservatives a favor by eschewing
another traditional pick like Roberts in favor of someone with
practical experience and someone with whose character he had personal
knowledge. But that, as they say, is something we won't know until
we know.
In the meantime,
the Republican base is in turmoil and Democrats can stand back
and watch with glee, gather their breath and come up with a strategy
to deal with Miers when she enters the Judiciary Committee hearings.
- T. Bevan 9:45 am Link
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