A Dysfunctional Relationship
1) By what indication is Miers a constitutionalist, Jen? And note that I said “constitutionalist” as opposed to “conservative.” That’s the point that you’re refusing to see – there are no indications that Harriet Miers will be a constitutionalist justice. That she is an evangelical is irrelevant (which makes it all the more infuriating that that is one of the White House's selling points to the base, since in order to have a, well, "prayer" of getting confirmed she will have to disavow that her personal beliefs will influence her judicial reasoning - whatever that turns out to be). That is precisely why the President is saying, “Trust me.” And that was NOT what we, his supporters, were led to believe he would do when the time finally arrived to make a SCOTUS pick that would actually change the balance on the High Court for the better.
There’s no excuse for it, Jennifer. None. We have a ten seat majority in the Senate. We have a Republican president. These are the conditions that the GOP has sold us on for years as what would lay the groundwork for redeeming the Supreme Court, and when we deliver, George Bush gives us an empty skirt and a wink.
It’s an insult, Jen. A slap in the face. Yours, too. But I guess your partisanship really isblind unconditional. You’re welcome to go there, but it’s not a journey on which I can ride shotgun.
2) “Hysteria”? Why don’t you actually read what I’ve posted this week, and the quotes of others who share that “hysteria.” Or is it all just “underarm farts” to you?
3) Did you read what Ed Gillespie said yesterday, and to whom, and in what circumstances, he said it? Prior to that, as I wrote earlier today, I hadn’t gone to “arrogant,” but the White House has crossed that Rubicon, and there’ll be no going back.
Nor will there be any going back from this rupture. It is not “arrogance” to expect that the President keep his years-long, oft-repeated campaign promise to nominate constitutionalist judges when it matters most. It is not “arrogance” to blast him for running away from a fight that he himself set up as eminently winnable.
Luttig, McConnell, Garza, Wilkinson, Jones, Brown, Owen, Pryor, Alita…and Bush promotes his personal attorney, who doesn’t have a tenth the qualifications of any of them or any outward manifestations of a judicial philosophy at all, never mind a constitutionalist one. How smart does one have to be to see that the Miers choice is, you should pardon the expression, stark raving insane? Do you really believe that loyalty between this president and his supporters is supposed to be a one-way street?
4) Of course Bush won the election. Of course he’s entitled to choose his judges. And when he screws up a choice as big as this one, his supporters (including in the Senate) are duty-bound, in both partisan and ideological terms, to let him know at the top of their lungs that he’s screwed up. And while the White House doesn’t have to heed their objections, dissenters who helped put Bush’s ass in that Oval Office are owed a helluva lot more than to be insulted and their legitimate concerns and objections openly belittled.
You had better hope that Republicans vote down this nomination, Jen. Continued majority control beyond next year may well depend upon it.
5) Why is it necessary to take the chance that Miers will be a disaster, Jennifer? We control the Senate. If Dubya is such a pussy, or Senate Republicans are so feckless, that we can’t even get constitutionalist judges nominated, much less confirmed, when doing so would tip the SCOTUS balance in the right direction – which was the GOP selling point for the past three election cycles – then I wonder if you might care to tell us just exactly when, and under what circumstances (hell, and by whom…) that objective ever CAN be realized.
And don't bother citing his appellate court nominees. Seven of the ten he renominated at the beginning of this year were shafted in John McCain's grand "memo of understanding" "compromise," and George Bush didn't lift a finger in defense of any of them, but just meekly let them all get tossed under the proverbial bus.
Maybe that should have been a red flag of what was to come.
6) Which of “the Left’s tactics” are we using, Jen? Could you be more specific?
All I’ve done, or seen any other dissenter do, is say that Harriet Miers is unqualified, bereft of any judicial philosophy, and was appointed for no other reasons than (1) she’s in Bush’s inner circle and (2) he thinks she’s easily confirmable. Whereas he promised to appoint SCOTUS judges in the mold, and of the calibre, of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, which Ms. Miers clearly is not.
That’s a broken promise, Jen. A big one. And when Bush goes on to say that Miers is “the best person he could find,” that’s just a lie, and a definite insult to the intelligence of every Republican who busted his/her ass to elect and re-elect him motivated highly by the judges issue.
I have admired Bush. Greatly and for a long time. But I don’t like being swindled, I don’t like being lied to, and I don’t like having my intelligence insulted, all by a man from whom I would never in my wildest dreams have expected any of it.
I decided a long time ago that I would never again let partisan wishful thinking interfere with my political analysis. That is what I am not doing and what you’re giving yourself over to wholeheartedly. And that’s very sad.
7) You can boil that Polipundit quote down to “Trust Dubya, and how dare any of his supporters not drink the Kool-Aid.” Also, they refer to Miers as “Judge Miers,” a title that she has never held. Talk about freudian artificial resume enhancement.
8) You think it’s harmful to the conservative movement that a man who runs for president billing himself as a conservative who will appoint constitutionalist judges, gets elected and re-elected largely on that premise, and then deliberately whiffs on his big chance to move the SCOTUS to the right is held to account for what he promised by that same conservative movement?
How about settling for temporary tax cuts? Letting Ted Kennedy strip school vouchers out of the NCLB bill? Allowing the GWOT to stall with the terror regimes in Syria and Iran intact, more or less guaranteeing that Iraq cannot be stabilized? Resurrected farm subsidies? Steel tariffs? An unneeded prescription drug entitlement? A bloated transportation bill? Ever more porous borders? Almost five years the conservative movement has been putting up with this Rockefeller Republicanism. Enough already.
Let’s be candid, Jen: there are three overriding reasons that conservatives have stuck with Bush: tax cuts, reconstitutionalizing the federal judiciary in general and the SCOTUS in particular, and the war. Well, the tax cuts are sunsetted and Republicans are afraid to try and make them permanent with the exploding deficits that they’ve created and Bush refuses to veto. The war has stalled because he refuses to finish it. And now the one remaining saving grace, gaining ground on the Supreme Court, which the Roberts nomination demonstrated was a slam dunk, has been left, at best, to a roll of the dice.
Relationships are supposed to be about give & take. This one between Bush43 and conservatives, at this point, looks more like bend over & grab the ankles.
And that ain’t “hysteria,” gentlelady; that’s as brass-tacks real as it gets.
UPDATE: Here's a Washington Times column written by Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer and international consultant. He opposes Harriet Miers' nomination and urges her to withdraw her name if the President won't (and he won't). Following are three crucial grafs:
Please provide a responsive (i.e. excluding terms like "arrogant," "elitist," "sexist," "hysteria," "shrill jeering," "name-calling," and "underarm farts"), substantive, and comprehensive critique of Mr. Fein's contentions and his conclusion.
You're free to prove us all wrong, Jennifer. Have at it.
There’s no excuse for it, Jennifer. None. We have a ten seat majority in the Senate. We have a Republican president. These are the conditions that the GOP has sold us on for years as what would lay the groundwork for redeeming the Supreme Court, and when we deliver, George Bush gives us an empty skirt and a wink.
It’s an insult, Jen. A slap in the face. Yours, too. But I guess your partisanship really is
2) “Hysteria”? Why don’t you actually read what I’ve posted this week, and the quotes of others who share that “hysteria.” Or is it all just “underarm farts” to you?
3) Did you read what Ed Gillespie said yesterday, and to whom, and in what circumstances, he said it? Prior to that, as I wrote earlier today, I hadn’t gone to “arrogant,” but the White House has crossed that Rubicon, and there’ll be no going back.
Nor will there be any going back from this rupture. It is not “arrogance” to expect that the President keep his years-long, oft-repeated campaign promise to nominate constitutionalist judges when it matters most. It is not “arrogance” to blast him for running away from a fight that he himself set up as eminently winnable.
Luttig, McConnell, Garza, Wilkinson, Jones, Brown, Owen, Pryor, Alita…and Bush promotes his personal attorney, who doesn’t have a tenth the qualifications of any of them or any outward manifestations of a judicial philosophy at all, never mind a constitutionalist one. How smart does one have to be to see that the Miers choice is, you should pardon the expression, stark raving insane? Do you really believe that loyalty between this president and his supporters is supposed to be a one-way street?
4) Of course Bush won the election. Of course he’s entitled to choose his judges. And when he screws up a choice as big as this one, his supporters (including in the Senate) are duty-bound, in both partisan and ideological terms, to let him know at the top of their lungs that he’s screwed up. And while the White House doesn’t have to heed their objections, dissenters who helped put Bush’s ass in that Oval Office are owed a helluva lot more than to be insulted and their legitimate concerns and objections openly belittled.
You had better hope that Republicans vote down this nomination, Jen. Continued majority control beyond next year may well depend upon it.
5) Why is it necessary to take the chance that Miers will be a disaster, Jennifer? We control the Senate. If Dubya is such a pussy, or Senate Republicans are so feckless, that we can’t even get constitutionalist judges nominated, much less confirmed, when doing so would tip the SCOTUS balance in the right direction – which was the GOP selling point for the past three election cycles – then I wonder if you might care to tell us just exactly when, and under what circumstances (hell, and by whom…) that objective ever CAN be realized.
And don't bother citing his appellate court nominees. Seven of the ten he renominated at the beginning of this year were shafted in John McCain's grand "memo of understanding" "compromise," and George Bush didn't lift a finger in defense of any of them, but just meekly let them all get tossed under the proverbial bus.
Maybe that should have been a red flag of what was to come.
6) Which of “the Left’s tactics” are we using, Jen? Could you be more specific?
All I’ve done, or seen any other dissenter do, is say that Harriet Miers is unqualified, bereft of any judicial philosophy, and was appointed for no other reasons than (1) she’s in Bush’s inner circle and (2) he thinks she’s easily confirmable. Whereas he promised to appoint SCOTUS judges in the mold, and of the calibre, of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, which Ms. Miers clearly is not.
That’s a broken promise, Jen. A big one. And when Bush goes on to say that Miers is “the best person he could find,” that’s just a lie, and a definite insult to the intelligence of every Republican who busted his/her ass to elect and re-elect him motivated highly by the judges issue.
I have admired Bush. Greatly and for a long time. But I don’t like being swindled, I don’t like being lied to, and I don’t like having my intelligence insulted, all by a man from whom I would never in my wildest dreams have expected any of it.
I decided a long time ago that I would never again let partisan wishful thinking interfere with my political analysis. That is what I am not doing and what you’re giving yourself over to wholeheartedly. And that’s very sad.
7) You can boil that Polipundit quote down to “Trust Dubya, and how dare any of his supporters not drink the Kool-Aid.” Also, they refer to Miers as “Judge Miers,” a title that she has never held. Talk about freudian artificial resume enhancement.
8) You think it’s harmful to the conservative movement that a man who runs for president billing himself as a conservative who will appoint constitutionalist judges, gets elected and re-elected largely on that premise, and then deliberately whiffs on his big chance to move the SCOTUS to the right is held to account for what he promised by that same conservative movement?
How about settling for temporary tax cuts? Letting Ted Kennedy strip school vouchers out of the NCLB bill? Allowing the GWOT to stall with the terror regimes in Syria and Iran intact, more or less guaranteeing that Iraq cannot be stabilized? Resurrected farm subsidies? Steel tariffs? An unneeded prescription drug entitlement? A bloated transportation bill? Ever more porous borders? Almost five years the conservative movement has been putting up with this Rockefeller Republicanism. Enough already.
Let’s be candid, Jen: there are three overriding reasons that conservatives have stuck with Bush: tax cuts, reconstitutionalizing the federal judiciary in general and the SCOTUS in particular, and the war. Well, the tax cuts are sunsetted and Republicans are afraid to try and make them permanent with the exploding deficits that they’ve created and Bush refuses to veto. The war has stalled because he refuses to finish it. And now the one remaining saving grace, gaining ground on the Supreme Court, which the Roberts nomination demonstrated was a slam dunk, has been left, at best, to a roll of the dice.
Relationships are supposed to be about give & take. This one between Bush43 and conservatives, at this point, looks more like bend over & grab the ankles.
And that ain’t “hysteria,” gentlelady; that’s as brass-tacks real as it gets.
UPDATE: Here's a Washington Times column written by Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer and international consultant. He opposes Harriet Miers' nomination and urges her to withdraw her name if the President won't (and he won't). Following are three crucial grafs:
Miss Miers' defenders insist she is likely to vote with Justices Scalia and Thomas in decisive cases. But the law pivots not on results but on reasoning, which guides subordinate tribunals, legislatures and executive officials. The power of the court is in explanations, not in ipse dixits. The idea Miss Miers would be intellectually equipped to write for the ages is preposterous, like believing an amateur writer would surpass Shakespeare if awarded a Nobel Prize.
In any event, since 1969, every Republican Supreme Court appointee like Miss Miers without steeled and sharp philosophical convictions has embraced freestyle constitutional law celebrating penumbras and mysteries of the universe as interpretive standards: Chief Justice Warren Burger, and Associate Justices Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter. Miss Miers is far more likely to follow the editorial pages of the New York Times and the academic exhortations of Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe than the instructions of Justices Scalia and Thomas or of Judge Bork.
Mediocre minds resist challenges to prevailing orthodoxies, which means Miss Miers would neither disturb nor confine the court's outlandish privacy, racial preference, church-state, death penalty, campaign finance, or enemy combatant decrees.
Please provide a responsive (i.e. excluding terms like "arrogant," "elitist," "sexist," "hysteria," "shrill jeering," "name-calling," and "underarm farts"), substantive, and comprehensive critique of Mr. Fein's contentions and his conclusion.
You're free to prove us all wrong, Jennifer. Have at it.
posted by JASmius at 6:46 PM
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