Miers. Will she make it?

[nychoya3]

www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1012055miers1.html

Okay folks, this is an honest question, if one I'm happy to be contemplating. Why did President Bush nominate Miers for the SCOTUS? Judicial nominations are the most sacrosanct role of the president to the religious right and the area where they are least willing to compromise. So now Bush is reduced to publicly citing Miers' born again status as justification for her elevation to the Supreme Court. The Miers nomination is seriously splintering the party. Do you think she'll be confirmed? Will she quietly withdraw?

I included the above link for no real reason other than it makes me giggle.

[thebin]

She was an atrocious choice- both because she isn't qualified and because SCOTUS jobs are not the appropriate forum for rewarding loyal lieutenants. That’s why we have embassy in Bermuda. I hope she withdraws or barring that, that she goes down in flames in the Senate. And no DFW, this has nothing to do with the fact that she isn't Ivy league- its because she literally would not make an informed person's list of the top 100 constitutional jurists. And that is an understatement- some say she isn't among the most qualified 1000 candidates in the nation on her record.

Is she another Souter? Maybe. But that's honestly completely besides the point. She doesn't deserve to be nominated pure and simple and Bush derserves to take one on the chin for this carelessness.

But to the original question....WILL she make it? Right now I would have to say its about dead even 50/50. If she were a man with the same credentials, 25% chance of making it tops.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

I mostly agree with you bin - I think that much will depend on how she does in the committee - if she can sound nearly half as articulate as Roberts then she'll have a chance otherwise she's dead in the water. I don't know what the White House was thinking - there's major fallout from the President naming a loyal liutenant without experience to FEMA and then right after that he nominates Miers. That just doesn't make sense.

[DFW HOYA]

Sorry, but I still don't get it. One argument is that she's not conservative enough, the other is that she's not distinguished enough. Maybe the larger issue is that she's not the candidate the cognoscenti wanted.

[Frank Black]

DFW, I think conservatives are most annoyed because we don't KNOW whether she is conservative enough. Its not that she ISN'T conservative, we just were ready to do battle over someone who was demonstrably conservative.
And everyone is annoyed because her only qualification is that she is Bush's buddy. I voted for this guy twice but I can honestly say I would not have voted for him in retrospect. He is simply unqualified to be president.

[WilsonBlvdHoya]

Thank you, Frank Black! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Just more evidence that this President values loyalty/sycophancy over competence, much less excellence. I can't enumerate the myriad examples (like Rumsfeld still as Secretary of Defense) but Miers is merely the latest....

[SirSaxa]

frankblack said:

He is simply unqualified to be president.

That is really the issue. He isn't even doing a good job as a Republican. If we were getting the benefits of the good points of traditional Republicanism (yes, there are some), this wouldn't be so bad. Things like a balanced budget -- anyone remember the "contract with America"?

And he has surrounded himself with blowhard incompetents like Rumsfeld and Cheney and Snow because he doesn't know any better. Let's face it. This president is incompetent and he is also DUMB. And of top of that, he is convinced he is right because "god told him". Sorry... that sounds like fundamentalist muslims to me.

Promoting creationism and "intelligent design" being anti-science? blurring the line between church and state -- but only for the benefit of born again Christians? Increasing non-defense govt. spending faster than anyone since LBJ? Blowing the budget surplus he inherited. And clearly NOT preparing the country for disasters -- manmade or natural.

We cannot get rid of this guy fast enough.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

Its not like his own party is doing all that well - they seem to be extremely adept at getting subpoenaed, indicted, and called into grand juries. The White House needs to hope that they can manage a few news cycles much better than they have in the past 45 days - otherwise the midterm elections are going to be an absolute disaster - eventhough local elections are won on local issues.

[jerseyhoya34]

I think the root problem is that Miers simply is not qualified. Come on, she was in charge of scratch and sniff lottery games in Texas. That's a far cry from sitting on the bench in the SCOTUS.

[EasyEd]

Harriet Miers will withdraw her name within the next week. We conservatives are not going to accept her. If she does not withdraw, she will be defeated by Republicans. Her nomination by Bush was a horrible move.

[DFW HOYA]

The comments above still reads that she lacks an imprimatur from the right and not some doctrinal dispute. I do not believe any President must rely on a predetermined list from which to select candidates. The Republic will endure whether Miers is the candidate or not; frankly, it's not the burning story elsewhere that it is in the DC to NY media corridor.

FWIW, I am not opposed to nominees that are not prior judges. The late Chief Justice Rehnquist was essentially a political appointee and did not serve on either circuit or district courts at the time of his nomination.

[nychoya3]

Personally, I agree that the qualifications issue is being overstated by, as DFW says, Beltway types. I'm sure she's a bright, capable woman. One doesn't have to be a Renquist or a Breyer to serve on the court. More disturbing to me is her obvious closeness to the president and the cronyism that this whole process reeks of. The last nominee (that I know of) to be this close to the appointing president was Abe Fortas and LBJ, and that ended terribly for everyone, despite Fortas' superior credentials.

What should democrats do? Should they rally around Miers, drive the right wing even crazier than they are now, and watch things go up in flames? It'd be interesting, but the right course is probably the silence and waiting for the hearings that they're undertaking now. I personally believe the administration will whip their senators and commentators into shape and get her through. It has NEVER been Bush's style to back down on anything, no matter how stupid. That she's a personal friend is all the more reason for him to stay steadfast.

[Nevada Hoya]

frankblack said:

DFW, I think conservatives are most annoyed because we don't KNOW whether she is conservative enough. Its not that she ISN'T conservative, we just were ready to do battle over someone who was demonstrably conservative.
And everyone is annoyed because her only qualification is that she is Bush's buddy. I voted for this guy twice but I can honestly say I would not have voted for him in retrospect. He is simply unqualified to be president.

Oh, my, FB; I am glad that you have finally seen the light. You can fool some of the people all of the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

nychoya3 said:

Personally, I agree that the qualifications issue is being overstated by, as DFW says, Beltway types. I'm sure she's a bright, capable woman. One doesn't have to be a Renquist or a Breyer to serve on the court. More disturbing to me is her obvious closeness to the president and the cronyism that this whole process reeks of. The last nominee (that I know of) to be this close to the appointing president was Abe Fortas and LBJ, and that ended terribly for everyone, despite Fortas' superior credentials.

What should democrats do? Should they rally around Miers, drive the right wing even crazier than they are now, and watch things go up in flames? It'd be interesting, but the right course is probably the silence and waiting for the hearings that they're undertaking now. I personally believe the administration will whip their senators and commentators into shape and get her through. It has NEVER been Bush's style to back down on anything, no matter how stupid. That she's a personal friend is all the more reason for him to stay steadfast.

I think that's actually a misconception - the Bush admin has backed down when they get criticism from the right - for example when Bush fired his entire economic team the night of the mid-term elections - there was significant pressure on him to drop O'Niel from the right - he caved just not when it was at the most politically opportune time.

[thebin]

dfw said:

Sorry, but I still don't get it. One argument is that she's not conservative enough, the other is that she's not distinguished enough. Maybe the larger issue is that she's not the candidate the cognoscenti wanted.

Nope. The larger issue really is that she isn't qualified. I swear this isn’t some latent Stonecutters/Skull & Bones/ Bilderburg conspiracy to keep out the local yokels from Texas with their pitchforks. Its genuine outrage that this pick is a flat out insult to those of us who have supported this president through some pretty tough times. For my part, it has NOTHING to do with whether she is the next Souter. It has everything to do with the fact that the selection itself is literally indefensible- even if the Brown fiasco at FEMA never came to light. She isn’t qualified for a federal appeals court slot. Even those of us outside the Beltway (this is a political discussion board right? ) like our Supremes supremely qualified. This isn't the people's branch. Its for the most exceptionally qualified experts in constitutional law you can find. She isn't even one of the 100 most qualified CONSERVATIVE lawyers in the nation according to a very plausible argument put forward by George Will. What’s your position on that by the way DFW- do want to argue differently on that point or do you just think that its not essential to strive for the absolute best for this particular gig? (That’s not a loaded or rhetorical question by the way, it really needs to be asked of you at this point.)

[AustinHoya03]

Agree with thebin on this one. Never realized until law school how gigantic the subject of Constitutional law is. Huge. I haven't even begun to comprehend a lot of it myself. And while the confirmation process of the new Chief Justice didn't really reveal how he feels about the commerce clause or privacy rights, I at least think he understands and has thought about such issues. My as-of-yet to be contradicted assumption is that Harriet Miers, as Bush's personal lawyer, didn't deal much, if at all, with these issues in her career, and there's no indication she's thought about them since she was at law school at SMU.

Maybe the real issue is that someone from Dallas is being rejected by the East Coast cognoscenti admired by so many NYT-reading Dallasites.

[DFW HOYA]

NYT-reading Dallasites? Methinks you confuse Dallas with the state capital...

Remember, this is a city where the Democratic mayors regularly run as non-partisan candidates, and where a number of Democratic judges actually run as Republicans so as to keep getting reelected. This was the city that was home to both Bush and Cheney...until the VP moved his residence to Wyoming, but that's for another thread. The NY Times doesn't get a lot of walk-up sales here in the Midwest.

And I disagree with Bin's assertion that the Court is reserved for the nine or so best constitutional law experts this nation can produce. Neither Warren nor Rehnquist were jurists before joining the court and each were powerful in their own right, regardless of your stand on either man. As I said above, I really don't know whether Miers is a reasonable choice at this point, but the lack of appeals court experience is not a disqualifier in my view.

[AustinHoya03]

dfw said:

NYT-reading Dallasites? Methinks you confuse Dallas with the state capital...

Hey man, I'm from Fort Worth. I had to get a jab in there somewhere.

I think most non-Dallasites' impression of Big D, rightly or wrongly, comes from the area between 75 and the tollway, and it's not exactly the typical Midwest.

And isn't the reason judges run as Republicans in Dallas not so they can be good ol' folks, but because the majority of the voters and the campaign funds come from North Dallas? And how can one run as a non-partisan candidate and a Democrat? Maybe you mean business-friendly Democrats?

Sorry to nitpick, I just find it interesting that you bring up a "here in the Midwest we don't really care about the Supreme Court story" argument every time threads like these are started, when a lot of people in Dallas, particularly the attorneys driving a large chunk of the local economy, clearly do care.

And yeah, unfortunately for me there are a lot of folks in Austin that read the New York Times in lieu of their local newspaper. I find it pretty surprising you haven't run into more in Big D.

As for Miers, no appeals court isn't an automatic disqualifier for me either, and I don't care if I've heard of the nominee or not, but I want to be able to point at some specific experience and say "okay, this person is at least somewhat familiar with the issues he/she will be facing as a Supreme Court Justice and is capable of handling those issues." With Rehnquist, you could point to his work at the DOJ. Warren was AG of California before he was governor. It doesn't necessarily have to be government service or being a judge. For example, if the President had nominated any of the con law profs at my law school I couldn't say any of them are unqualified (although I might disagree with some of their views re: Con Law). Best thing Miers has going is being president of the Texas State Bar, which, from what I understand, isn't exactly a position in which one is faced with constitutional questions.

[DFW HOYA]

Fair points there. Not being an attorney, I'm sure it's more of a water-cooler item than it is in IT.

The "Midwest" moniker is a reference to an old discussion whereby some officials at Georgetown seem to consider everything between the Beltway and California as the Midwest. The Dallas regional club was once placed in a "Midwest" classification with Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Louisville, and New Orleans, among others. I think Denver was also within that list.

[SirSaxa]

There is a very interesting OpEd piece on this subject in the NY Times today. 10-17-05
www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/opinion/17ponnuru.html

The column covers the schism among conservatives about Miers and gives some perspective on how that came about:

Excerpt:
"Conservatives who were paying attention in 2000 knew that Mr. Bush would not be a budget-cutter. They knew, as well, that he did not share their opposition to race-conscious affirmative action, or the desire that many of them had for immigration restrictions. They calculated, however, that he would be good on their highest-priority issues - and that given difficult political circumstances, they had to give ground on their lower-priority issues. Mr. Bush could be counted on, conservatives thought, to make the nation more secure, to appoint "strict constructionist" judges in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, to cut taxes and to reform entitlements.

Moreover, Mr. Bush's reliability on those issues would mitigate the impact of his deviations. Conservative justices would set limits on racial preferences even if the president did not. Tax cuts would restrain federal spending, and Social Security reform based on private investment would make voters less dependent on government and thus, over time, more tolerant of budget cuts. So conservatives placed their bets on Mr. Bush.

But five years into Mr. Bush's presidency, conservatives have cause to re-evaluate their compromises. While most conservatives supported the invasion of Iraq, many have grave doubts about the conduct of the war. Medicare has been expanded more than it has been reformed. Social Security reform appears to be dead for now. Tax cuts may have inhibited spending - perhaps Medicare would have been expanded even more without them - but they have hardly imposed anything that could fairly be called "restraint."

The president appears not just to oppose immigration restrictions, but to be committed to liberalization. Hurricane Katrina shook conservatives, too. ..... they want the federal government to perform its core functions competently."

The writer: Ramesh Ponnuru, a senior editor at National Review.