We owe her a “Thank You!“
Let’s get this straight: Harriet Miers was not a good nominee, but she wasn’t pilloried, George Bush was.
Miers nomination was cronyism – a sin of pride, indifference and hypocrisy. Pride that he could hand this plum to a friend; indifference to the consequences for her or for his country; and such looseness regarding principle that it barely rises to the level of hypocrisy. Should I say that summarizes to “corrupt?” It was Tammany Hall corrupt.
It is the most egregious act of this administration in Constitutional terms, and the most objectionable in human terms. In moral terms, it is unrestrained pragmatism – worthy of Bill Clinton.
This would have been an abject abandonment of principle even if Dubya hadn’t promised a certain type of Supreme Court nominee. But he did, and we could read his lips. We remember Souter, Kennedy, O’Connor and Stevens.
Of the 9 current SCOTUS justices the GOP is responsible for 7. Not again!
Bush, not Miers, showed lack of character, experience and probity. In this he repeated a mistake he’s made before, misunderestimating the principles of his “base.” “We” were only ever his base because AlGore and HeServedinVietnamKerry were so abominably worse. There’s a limit to lesser evil.
I’m hoping the President “gets it” now. My sympathies to Miers because he didn’t get it earlier.
Please indulge me while I quote Mark Steyn from this week’s UK Spectator… When I say Miss Miers is a mediocrity, that in itself is not a reason not to appoint her to the Supreme Court. For the first two centuries of the Republic, mediocre cronies were the rule rather than the exception. One thinks of Roscoe Conkling, appointed by Chester Arthur — or, rather, one doesn’t. It’s only in the revisionist interpretation of the Supreme Court as the ultimate nine-man omniscient parliament in which resides all true power to legislate the affairs of the nation that mediocrity would seem to be a disqualification. A decision of the court, according to Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats’ House leader, is ‘almost as if God has spoken’. Even in a robe, it’s hard to see Harriet Miers like that. But, on the other hand, one could argue that restoring the tradition of appointing hacks, creeps and time-servers to the court is a profoundly conservative act. Interesting…