Hail Harriet?

(As in "hail Mary" - like throwing the bomb on the last play of the game in football...Geez, I hate having to explain these references...)

Anyway, that seems like an apt description of this latest kooky White House idea to salvage the capsizing Miers Supreme Court nomination:

The Bush Administration, concerned that vocal critics are wounding Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers while she quietly prepares for her Senate hearing 12 days from now, is considering ways to fight back - possibly by having her make a speech - sources familiar with the discussions said yesterday.

Some presidential advisers and senators think it would be unwise for Miers to speak out before the hearing, and it was unclear yesterday how strongly key decision-makers were considering the idea of her making a speech, according to three people who have discussed the matter with White House officials. But the fact that presidential aides are considering the unorthodox tactic of having a court nominee speak publicly in advance of a Senate confirmation hearing is a sign of the concern surrounding the appointment, the sources said.

A sign of desperation, they mean. I don't know if that's ever been done before, but I do know that it hasn't been in the post-Bork era. But then this is also the first true "stealth" appointment by a GOP president in the post-Souter era as well, which goes a lot further in explaining even the consideration of this gambit.

Hasn't the White House line been that when Miss Miers gets before the Judiciary Committee she'll knock our socks off and hit every hardball thrown at her out of the park? Isn't the chief Miersian insistence that her opponents shut up and lay off her until those hearings? So what's the rush to get her before the public when doing so in a favorably staged setting can only contrast poorly with what the hearings will portray?

Shall we review how little she has impressed individual senators?

"I am uneasy about where we are,” said Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. "Some conservative people are concerned. That is pretty obvious.”

Meanwhile, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas has publicly questioned her legal views on abortion, and the committee chairman, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, has suggested that Miers could benefit from a "crash course in constitutional law.”

Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, called Republican sentiment toward the Miers nomination "a question mark.”

"There [are] an awful lot of Republican senators who are saying we are going to wait and see. It is going to be incumbent on her to get as much information to Republicans as possible in response, particularly, to some of the fundamental constitutional issues. She has really got to raise the comfort level around here.”

Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, said he needed "to get a better feel for her intellectual capacity and judicial philosophy, core competence issues.” [emphasis added]

Coleman: "I certainly go into this with concerns."

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a Judiciary Committee member, noted that senators who had met with Miers were telling colleagues that they left unimpressed.

"She needs to step it up a notch,” Graham concluded.

Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, revealed that there was not much enthusiasm for the nomination among Senate Republicans, although most had "held their fire.”

The discomfort level can perhaps best be illustrated by Senator Sessions’ reaction to the question if the debate had become "one-sided” - with too few defending Miers.

According to the Times, Sessions struggled for words, then pushed a button for a nearby elevator in the Capitol building and told an aide, "Get me out of here.”

If the Miers debate has become "one-sided," perhaps that ought to tell the reporter - as well as President Bush - everything they need to know about this nomination. And Senator Lott's "holding our fire" comment ought to be a hint the size of a piano casing that the White House should not let this nominee reach the Judiciary Committee.

Besides all of that, haven't they incurred enough headaches from her past speeches without creating a new one that couldn't be minimized as being "in the past" and could be called "campaigning" for a post that is supposed to be apolitical?

This isn't to suggest that Miers is without her GOP defenders. Senator John Cornyn of Texas is, I'm assuming, just being a homer, but two other names that stupidly peeped up yesterday sound dismayingly and infuriatingly familiar:

Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, said that if Miss Miers withdrew now she would only hurt Republican senators who are uneasy about her nomination. It would suggest that special interest groups control the nomination process, he said. Mr. Graham said the nominee can't withdraw for this reason alone and that the hearings will go forward as planned.

"If she withdraws, that means that we, the party and the President, have given in to special interest politics who want to shake up the process," Mr. Graham said in an interview. "So I am dead set against her withdrawing, especially now. I don't want special interest groups on the right or the left to hijack the nomination process." ...

"Enough is enough," Mr. DeWine said. "If I pick up one more paper and read about one more group that I've never heard of saying they're for Miers or against Miers - it just doesn't matter at this point."

Oh, really, Senator DeWine? I beg to differ. As to Lindsey F'ing Graham...well, click here for some cathartic venting. What he uttered in this quote is one of the most mind-bendingly appalling pieces of hypocrisy I have ever beheld in twenty-five years of following national politics. This is the man who, along with his six backstabbing RINO conspirators, validated the Democrat "hijacking of the nomination process" by themselves hijacking Majority Doofus Bill Frist's ponderously belated attempt to take the nomination process back. And now here we are, five months later, with a mystery meat SCOTUS nomination that is the direct consequence of Senator Graham's perfidy, and he dares to call mere criticism of Harret Miers from the Right - which, I'll add, is not being accompanied by any calls for a filibuster of her nomination - "special interest politics" that is trying to "hijack the nomination process"?

Harriet Miers should be withdrawn just because Lindsey Graham thinks she shouldn't be.

And the other reasons for pulling the plug on this debacle abound more plentifully by the day.

(HT: CQ)