Hard Starboard

Remember how John Roberts' whirlwind tour of Senate offices foreshadowed his tour de force performance before the Judiciary Committee that left every last Donk looking like senile dementiacs, drooling Neanderthals, and Joe Biden? Well, if the same dynamic holds true for Harriet Miers, she'd better not start packing up her West Wing office just yet.

"Land 'o goshen," as my late German grandmother used to say. Where do I begin?

Let's try Miers' meeting with Chucky Schumer:

President Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers, won't be ready for a confirmation hearing November 7 because she "needs some time to learn" about landmark constitutional cases, Senator Schumer said yesterday.
Mr. Schumer, a Democrat of New York who sits on the Judiciary Committee that will grill Ms. Miers, met with her yesterday and emerged to tell reporters that she claimed she had never discussed the Supreme Court case that struck down anti-abortion laws, Roe v. Wade, with anyone in a three-decade legal career. He said she told him that she will have to think about whether she supports Griswold v. Connecticut, a 1965 privacy case that established the legal groundwork for the later abortion ruling.

{running hand over face} Far be it from me to put any unwarranted stock in anything the smearer of Michael Steele says, but good Lord, she's never discussed Roe v. Wade in thirty years as a lawyer? Hell, in ANY context? And she's being sold to us as a solid vote against Roe? And ditto Griswold, with which even I, a non-lawyer and damn proud of it, am at least superficially familiar?

Frankly, that is so pathetic that I have difficulty believing it. Whether that means that Schumer was BSing or Miers was almost doesn't matter, although I'd really rather that it was Chucky making it up for the nightmare that the alternative represents.

The Schumer meeting, as it turned out, was the frying pan before the fire:

After their meeting, [Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen] Specter told reporters that Miers told him she believed the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut - a landmark ruling establishing the right to privacy - was "rightly decided."

Wow, that didn't take long - or did it?

But when the White House took exception to Specter's comments, the Pennsylvania Republican released a statement saying Miers later called him to tell him that he had "misunderstood" her answer.

Specter said she told him she had not taken a position on either Griswold or the right to privacy, the legal underpinning for the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

Specter's statement did not withdraw his comments about Miers discussing Griswold with him, nor did it offer a correction. But the statement said the chairman accepted Miers contention "that he misunderstood what she said."

This is just supposition on my part, but I think that sequence, in Ms. Miers' mind, worked like this: Schumer asks her about Griswold; knowing that her handlers have told her not to disclose any position on anything, she indicated she'd "have to think about it," which is not a deflection but rather a stall since it implies that she will offer an opinion at a later time. This doubtless grew out of her disinclination for confrontation - she knew she was, in essence, stiffing the New York senator and instinctively tried to soften the blow.

Yet Schumer reacts negatively. So in her next meeting with "Snarlin' Arlen," she can't bring herself to stiff him as she did Schumer, and tells Chairman Specter what she thinks he wants to hear. So Specter emerges from the meeting and tells reporters that Miers agrees with Griswold.

The Bushies get wind of this, groan, mutter expletives, and get on the blower to their nominee and pointedly remind her of the "stealth" script and the need for her to stick to it. So she ringy-dingies Senator Specter and tries to mend the damage by claiming that he "misunderstood" her.

That's one possible explanation. Another is that Miers simply had such difficulty communicating the most basic concepts of constitutional law that Schumer and Specter really couldn't make head or tail out of what she said and simply put their own spin on it. Either way I more and more find myself marveling at the sheer suicidal chutzpah of a White House that is actually determined to send this woman into the kiln of confirmation hearings like the proverbial fart in a hurricane. What can possibly be the point of such a banzai charge? To prove that Ms. Miers is so loyal to the President that she will willingly subject herself to national humiliation for his sake? To what end, since the chances of her confirmation grow more remote by the day?

Look, I know that there is no defeat so small that Republicans can't pull it from the jaws of victory. God, do I know it. But if the White House thought that Senate 'Pubbies would cut and run from a fight over a bona fide constitutionalist, does the former seriously believe that the latter will battle to the death over this woman? Without either an established judicial philosophy or legitimate qualifications (both of which John Roberts had in embarrassing abundance) what conceivable grounds will they have to defend her? Miers' sponsors have set her up not as a "strict constructionist" but as a right-wing judicial activist. If she endorses that angle, the Dems will crucify and filibuster her, and it's difficult to believe that the McCain Mutineers would consent to the Byrd Option. If she contradicts it, she destroys her own credibility and that of the White House (with dire implications for any future nominations) and probably gets voted down outright.

Half the Senate Republican caucus and as many as six of the ten GOPers on the Judiciary Committee are running away, or at least keeping their distance, from Miers, including Tom Coburn, John Thune, George Allen, Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, David Vitter, Norm Coleman, and Trent Lott. Will they all ultimately "fall into line" as the White House is belligerently demanding? With the solid Dem opposition we can most likely expect, all it would take is six defections to send her to the bottom. And at last report the "yea" count was only three votes above that - and "sinking." And two more Judiciary Donks have sent out what the Bushies should consider ominous warning signals.

Cap'n Ed had a warning of his own:

Two possibilities present themselves at this point, more than two weeks after the announcement of Harriet Miers as the nominee to the Supreme Court. Either this White House simply isn't competent to properly promote a marginal candidate to the highest bench, or the candidate herself makes it impossible to promote the nomination in any convincing way. In either case, the Miers nomination promises to become an albatross on the presidency, a nine-day blunder that could easily blossom either into a legacy, such as Clarence Thomas, or a nightmare, such as David Souter. The only constant is that every time the White House starts touting Miers, it only makes matters worse.

The Administration needs to stop talking about her altogether, or withdraw her nomination. And if she can't handle Arlen Specter better in a one-on-one session than she did yesterday, God help her and the Bush Administration in her Judiciary Committee hearings.

K-Lo echoed those sentiments:

This nomination is a mess, with supporters of the White House — folks who would be enthused to support a solid nominee for the Supreme Court — put in unnecessarily awkward positions as the White House just can't make the case for the Miers choice. This does not have to continue. As National Review recommended on Friday: "The President could...start over. Both he and his party would probably benefit from having the clear fight over the direction of the courts that only a new nominee would allow. But for that to happen, some conservative senators are going to have to send a diplomatic message to the White House."

Sound advice, and counsel that is being heeded everywhere, it seems, except the White House itself. And just as they obstinately refuse to admit how badly they've shortsheeted their own bed on this nomination, so they will remain trapped within it as it goes down in flames - and then blame us for the defeat, just as they're denouncing us as "elitists" and "sexists" now.

Forget God helping the Bushies. My prayer is that somebody from outside the President's inner circle manages to talk some sense into Harriet Miers and restore the perspective she had back in July when she declined SCOTUS consideration.

After all, what else are friends for?

UPDATE 10/20: Straight from today's Washington Post:

The top two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday complained about the written responses they received from Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers this week, and warned her to expect tough questions from Republicans and Democrats alike when her confirmation hearing begins November 7.

Barely concealing their irritation during a 35-minute news conference at the Capitol, Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) and ranking Democrat Patrick J. Leahy (VT) called the lobbying on Miers's behalf "chaotic," and said the answers she provided Monday to a lengthy questionnaire were inadequate. "The comments I have heard range from incomplete to insulting," Leahy said.

They sent Miers a three-page letter asking for more detailed responses in several areas, and Specter said he has asked the Bush Administration for more documents concerning her work as White House counsel. Specter said Miers must provide "amplification on many, many of the items" included in the first questionnaire.

~ ~ ~

Miers quickly replied, writing that she would comply with the new request. She also wrote that "as a result of an administrative oversight," her Texas law license was suspended for 26 days in 1989 because of unpaid dues. On Monday, Miers disclosed that her D.C. law license was briefly suspended last year because of unpaid annual dues....

~ ~ ~

At yesterday's news conference, Specter appeared to be annoyed with Miers on several points. He said his staff gave him a "big binder" of legal cases she had handled in private practice, but "she gave us a skimpy little group" of material describing those cases in response to the questionnaire's request for details of her most important cases. "No reason we should know more about her cases than she does," he said.

Specter said he remained perplexed by a disagreement Monday stemming from his meeting with Miers in his office, after which their accounts differed on what the nominee had said about Supreme Court rulings that preceded Roe.

In dealing with 11 Supreme Court nominees, Specter said, "I've never walked out of a room and had a disagreement as to what was said."...

~ ~ ~

Meanwhile, several constitutional law scholars said they were surprised and puzzled by Miers's response to the committee's request for information on cases she has handled dealing with constitutional issues. In describing one matter on the Dallas City Council, Miers referred to "the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause" as it relates to the Voting Rights Act.

"There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause," said Cass R. Sunstein, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago. He and several other scholars said it appeared that Miers was confusing proportional representation - which typically deals with ethnic groups having members on elected bodies - with the one-man, one-vote Supreme Court ruling that requires, for example, legislative districts to have equal populations.