More on Miers

  • This will only be of inter­est to those with a polit­i­cal bent, but I thought this was inter­est­ing com­men­tary from Wall St. Journal’s “Opin­ion Jour­nal.” The writer is James Taranto. I espe­cially loved the next-to-last para­graph, which I ital­i­cized:

    Miers Finds Few Buyers

    WASHINGTON–When Pres­i­dent Bush nom­i­nated Har­riet Miers on Mon­day, we saw it as a missed oppor­tu­nity. It left us under­whelmed, not appalled. But hav­ing spend last evening com­muning here with some 1,000 con­ser­v­a­tives at National Review’s 50th anniver­sary din­ner, we see a polit­i­cal dis­as­ter in the making.

    We talked to quite a few peo­ple, and we heard not a sin­gle kind word about the nom­i­na­tion from any­one who wasn’t on the White House staff. A cou­ple of our sound­ings led us to think that such sup­port as it has received has been more syco­phan­tic than sin­cere. One puta­tive pro­po­nent pri­vately dis­tanced him­self from his pub­lic praise of Miers. Another per­son, whose employer has strongly backed the Miers nom­i­na­tion, told us, “Of course, I dis­agree wholeheartedly.”

    The White House seems gen­uinely befud­dled by the inten­sity of con­ser­v­a­tive oppo­si­tion, and espe­cially stung by the harsh words of George Will and Trent Lott. The White House posi­tion seems to be that Bush gave the Supreme Court an excel­lent leader in Chief Jus­tice John Roberts (on this point, of course, we agree whole­heart­edly), and that what the pres­i­dent was seek­ing in his sec­ond pick was not some­one with “sharp elbows” but a reli­able “con­ser­v­a­tive” vote.

    This is sim­i­lar to the left’s descrip­tion of Clarence Thomas as a mere fol­lower of Antonin Scalia. If the White House is adopt­ing this invid­i­ous car­i­ca­ture as its ideal, con­ser­v­a­tives have every rea­son to be angry.

    Con­ven­tional wis­dom still has it that Miers is a shoo-in for con­fir­ma­tion. We’re not so sure. From what we saw last night, the right is furi­ous at Pres­i­dent Bush for appoint­ing some­one they see as man­i­festly under­qual­i­fied and for duck­ing a fight with the Demo­c­ra­tic left–a fight that, in their view (and ours), would be good for the coun­try, the con­ser­v­a­tive cause and the Repub­li­can Party.

    Bush may be get­ting a fight any­way. And while he can laugh off the Angry Left, which would never sup­port him no mat­ter what he did, the Angry Right is a force he’d be a fool to underestimate.


    Related posts:

    1. Bush nom­i­nated … who now?
    2. Cou­ple Mon­day observations
    3. The num­ber of abor­tions under GWB
    4. The deval­u­a­tion of shock

    October 9th, 2005 | Grace | No Comments |

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