Shooting Down The "Miers Is A Christian" Defense

Ed Morrissey and Gerard Bradley form a formidable, if unwitting, tag-team that power-bombs this pro-Miers canard.

Cap'n Ed covers the hypocrisy angle:

For my part, I would much rather rely on a firm body of Constitutional scholarship or judicial opinions than church attendance for faith in this candidate. The push by more enthusiastic Miers supporters to consider her religious outlook smacks of a bit of hypocrisy. After all, we argued the exact opposite when it came to John Roberts and William Pryor when they appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for their appointments. We derided Chuck Schumer and his references to "deeply held personal beliefs". Conservatives claimed that using religion as a reason for rejection violated the Constitution and any notion of religious freedom. Does that really change if we base our support on the same grounds?

Mr. Bradley gets to the heart of the matter, which is that "deeply held personal beliefs" and respect for and knowledge of Constitutional law and original intent are two entirely different things:

This is definitely the view of Justice Scalia. He firmly believes that the Constitution is silent on abortion, that it interposes no objection to permissive abortion laws. Yet I am confident that Scalia believes that abortion is, morally speaking, like murder or manslaughter. Justice Scalia would reverse Roe. But he would be the first one to tell you that, in doing so, he is NOT enacting (or imposing or even relying upon) his own moral views. He will tell you that he honestly believes that the Constitution, properly construed, requires him to give judgment against Roe....

[Pro-Miers flacks] should stop reading tea leaves and paper scraps to discern Harriet Miers's moral convictions: did she attend a pro-life dinner in 1989 or did she just give them a check? If she is close to Nathan Hecht and if he is pro-life than she must be, too. Enough already: Harriet Miers is pro-life. Done. Full stop. But that is not what conservatives need to know about her. What they need to know is the answer to the question about Roe. And it seems to me that, here, Harriet Miers' supporters should not try to have it both ways: satisfy conservatives on the Roe question by pointing to her moral convictions at exactly the same time they declare her moral convictions to be irrelevant to the work of a justice.

Put more concisely, we conservatives insist that we want judges who will not legislate from the bench by applying their own personal views in lieu of the intent of the law and the framers. Yet Harriet Miers is being sold on the basis of her alleged evangelical personal views. Does this mean that her supporters, and the President, are cool with her imposing those personal views from Olympus? Wouldn't that vindicate every heretofore bogus, unfair distortion that the other side throws at constitutionalist judicial nominees?

Cap'n Ed thinks so:

We need to put an end to this line of inquiry about Miers. If this is all we get in terms of evidence on which to support her candidacy, then the White House and the Miers cheerleaders need to acknowledge their error. Otherwise, we will hand the Schumers all the ammunition they need to keep evangelicals and Catholics off the Supreme Court for the next generation.

And that assumes that her personal views, absent any accompanying originalist roots, would survive the leftward tidal forces that would seize her once she took her place on the SCOTUS. And, once again, there is nothing in her background and career to suggest that that isn't precisely what would happen.

The Cap'n tip-toes up to the line of agreeing with me with this peroration:

Either come up with more substantial and appropriate evidence for supporting her nomination, preferably some exceptional scholarship or casework, or withdraw her nomination.

UPDATE: Here's an excellent addendum brought up by El Rushbo:

[Miers is] going to have to say at the hearings that whatever her personal beliefs are will have no bearing on her ruling. They're required to say this. Even if they're lying, they are required to say it.

If the White House's best selling point to the GOP base is that this woman is a pro-life evangelical and then she tells the Judiciary Committee that her personal beliefs will have no bearing on how she rules on the Court, doesn't that guarantee that the President will be lying - either directly to the base or indirectly to the Senate? And doesn't that throw us right back into the conundrum of what her judicial philosophy is, or if she has one at all?

What was Bush thinking?

UPDATE II: Here's at least one other evangelical besides myself who isn't impressed at what is looking more and more like the President's cynical act of tokenism (via the Corner):

This is affirmative action at it's worst. And while I don't expect terribly much of James Dobson, I did expect more of Marvin Olasky. His latest pro-Miers post on World Magazine (which follows the woefully inadequate defense of Miers found in today's LA Times) argues that Miers is great BECAUSE she is evangelical and her "internal compass . . . includes a needle pointed toward Christ" and she has a "servant disposition."

Since George Bush has absolutely nothing objective to recommend for Miers this is what he means when he says to trust him. He is telling his Christian Right supporters to *wink-wink* support her because she's *wink-wink* evangelical.

Again, affirmative action at its worst. Identity politics at its worst. And shame on evangelicals for being caught up in it.

That last graf leads me back to a George Neumayr column from yesterday:

Before he became president, George Bush was asked by journalist Tucker Carlson, what activity don't you excel at? He responded, "Sitting down and reading a 500-page book on public policy or philosophy or something." Like his father, Bush suffers from an unwillingness to engage conservative political philosophy seriously. While his political attenae is keener than his father's and he has more access to common sense than his father on certain issues, he, too, stumbles on the "vision thing" and struggles to stake out philosophically rigorous positions. The media are quick to note Bush's laziness of thought, but they are reluctant, lest it screw up their right/left narrative, to note its principal characteristic: borrowing heavily from liberal rhetoric and uncritically accepting many foolish assumptions of liberalism. [emphasis added]

Buying into the notion of a "female seat" on the SCOTUS and now piling atop it the idea of a "fundie" seat as well sure looks like precisely what Neumayr is contending. And that does not speak well at all of how the President, or his handlers, truly view religious conservatives.