A Sinking Nomination?

I said yesterday that I couldn't begin to guess in which direction the Harriet Miers SCOTUS nomination is headed. That's why I added the question mark above. I'll stick by that stance, at least for now. But if I were a Miersian, sheer self-respect would be causing me a debilitating combination of cold sweats and clamming up right about now. And a big reason why is the steady deterioration of the nominee's prospects in the Senate:

Harriet Miers, unlike previous Republican nominees, will face hostile questioning from both Democrats and Republicans when she appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Several Republican senators - including committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Sam Brownback of Kansas - have said they won't be cutting her any slack just because she's a Republican nominee. And Republican staffers say privately that they're researching her background as if she were a "third-party nominee."...

Republican staff lawyers on the committee - normally the ones building the case to confirm a Republican nominee - say they are despondent over Mr. Bush's choice and some are actively working to thwart her. "I don't know anybody who is buying what the White House is selling here," said one Republican staffer. "They're putting out a bunch of positive rhetoric, but they're not putting any substance behind it," said another....

A second meeting last week between staffers and White House officials devolved into a confrontational affair. Republican Senate aides who attended that meeting say the White House no longer returns their phone calls and e-mails seeking information about Miss Miers.

Republicans also say they were angered by some of the White House "spin," such as the argument that Miss Miers is similar to conservative icon and former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist because neither had previous experience as a judge. "That's just grossly offensive," said an aide.

Staffers also said many of them chuckled over a biographical "pocket card" of talking points about Miss Miers that the White House distributed for use by any senator wishing to praise the nominee. "They had to double-space it," said one aide, laughing.

Far from alienating their bosses, this staffer disaffection seems to reflect the fact that six of the ten Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are "skeptical" at best about Ms. Miers. That would, at least in theory, still leave as many as twelve votes in her favor, but aside from the manifestly unpalatable (in so many ways) prospect of putting the President in Pat Leahy's debt, there's the little matter of the knee-jerk compulsion of the Democrats' far-left, Bush-hating base to demand all-out jihad against anything the President tries to do that I referred to yesterday. And sure enough, moveon.org is moving to DEFCON 1 against Bush's "girl":

MoveOn's "Research on Harriet Miers" project asks members to dig into her background, steering their volunteer gumshoes to episodes in Miers' past that might yield the most damaging information.

"Here are some questions to guide your search," Moveon advises:

• "What was her record at the head of the scandal-ridden Texas Lottery Commission?

• "What cases did she take on while working as a corporate lawyer in private practice, and what positions did she fight for?

• "White House Council [sic] Alberto Gonzales played a pivotal role in softening Americas stance on torture. What positions has Harriet Miers advocated for in the same role?

• "Has she ever publicly distanced herself from George W. Bush?

• "What are her views on environmental protections, corporate crime, and the right to choose?

Take particular note of that last bullet point in light of the emphasis the White House is placing upon Miers' religious convictions, which she will either have to turn around and disavow, or else reiterate, bringing unholy hell down around her ears.

If Judiciary Dems followed their Roberts template, combined with six GOP no votes, that would tally up to an 11-7 rejection of the Miers nomination. But if she played up her evangelical bona fides, we'd be looking at that margin swelling to 14-4, with a minimum of five of those six "skeptical" Republicans having to hold their noses and switch off their higher brain functions in order to turn the tide in the Administration's favor.

To borrow Las Vegas' marketing slogan, "What starts at moveon.org ends up coming out of Democrat senators' mouths." And whatever Miers says in response will alienate one side of the aisle or the other.

This is the lion's den into which George Bush is sending his "friend." Bruce Fein, an attorney and former Reagan aide, concurs:

Fein,...who opposes Miers' nomination, said he thinks Miers is vulnerable to close questioning on Supreme Court cases. He predicted that it would be easy for senators to ''make a fool of Miers" by marching through constitutional cases and asking her to explain.

''If there is an intent to show that she just knows none of these things, I think they'll have to recess and see if there is a gracious way for her to withdraw," said Fein, who helped prepare Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for her confirmation hearing in 1981. ''I just can't imagine a nomination where a candidate is unable to answer 40 questions that someone with a reasonable immersion in constitutional history would have on the tip of their tongue. The Supreme Court isn't for on-the-job training."

Indeed it is not. This is the spectacle toward which the President's de facto "girl friday" is hurtling, a fate which would, it seems to me, be far more politically damaging to the White House than withdrawing her nomination now would be.

Instead their straw-grasping grows ever more ludicrously frantic:

Drudge has an item up which claims that some significant number of judges took themselves out of consideration because the process has become so brutal - according to a conversation [Focus on the Family founder Dr. James] Dobson claims to have had with Karl Rove.

I don't buy it. I don't buy that several people who've been in contention for months or years decided to take their names off the list at the last minute. I don't believe that their fear was most acute after Roberts' generally civil hearings (even though everyone predicted the next hearings would be worse). One person, maybe. But en masse? No way. This sounds like their setting Miers up as the good soldier taking one for the team. It also sounds like whining.

Are we supposed to believe that after a generation of tireless work by the conservative legal community and hundreds of appointments to lower courts, there's not one confirmable jurist in America more objectively qualified than Miers who isn't such a fraidy cat he or she can't stand up to such titans of the legal community as Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy?...

A rhetorical question, obviously. Just another attemped dodge designed to cover ass for a horrendous mistake of a nomination that is taking on water in buckets far faster than its handful of amatuer White House spinners can bail. And even presuming it were true, remember also that the Bushies pre-emptively limited themselves to female candidates, excluding Luttig, McConnell, Alita, Garza, Pryor, Wilkinson, et al at a stroke.

And, of course, it isn't true:

A journalist friend just spoke with a top Texas lawyer who spoke with Priscilla Owen last week. He says that she "most emphatically" did not withdraw her name from consideration to the Court. If the White House spin is that Harriet Miers got the job because nobody else wanted it, it would seem that the White House is at a desperation point.

Indeed it is. But rather than see the handwriting on the wall and do the prudent, if ego-bruising thing and pulling Miers in favor of a real constitutionalist judge, Dubya appears intent on riding this "horse" straight into the ground:

Even more ominously, the Today show interview announces a new strategy of trying to win the Miers nomination by waging war on the President's core supporters. In the first week of the battle, the White House sent out James Dobson to woo evangelical conservatives. That didn't work out too well. So now the White House has switched strategies. It has turned its back on conservative evangelicals and is instead using Laura Bush to woo suburban moderates.

But remember: Laura Bush is on record as a supporter - not just of abortion rights - but of the Roe v. Wade decision. Interviewed on the Today program in January 2001, Mrs. Bush was asked point blank about the case. Her answer: "No, I don't think it should be overturned." Is it credible that Mrs. Bush would be endorsing Harriet Miers if the first lady thought that Miers would really do what James Dobson thinks she'll do? [emphasis added]

As Arizona Cardinals offensive lineman Pete Kendall once told a Seattle sportsradio talk host in his chowder-thick Boston accent, "That's a faiah question." If it also sounds a lot like the John McCain "win without conservatives" 2000 GOP presidential primary strategy - which failed miserably (and which benefitted a certain then-Texas governor so handsomely), go to the head of the class.

Mr. Frum tells us where this suicidal muleheadedness will likely lead:

It is madness for a 37% president to declare war on his strongest supporters, but that is exactly the strategy that this unwise nomination has forced upon President Bush. And every day that passes, he will get angrier, the attacks will get fiercer - and his political position will weaken.

That is why it is wrong and dangerous for Republicans to say, "Let's wait for the hearings." Even if the hearings start in the next couple of weeks, as the White House now says it wishes, the Miers matter will extend itself at least into November. That's a month and more of the president's team accusing the president's supporters of sexism, elitism, and who knows what else; a month of rising tension between this president and the conservatives who elected him; a month in which the president's poll numbers will drop even further. The longer it continues, the costlier this battle will prove for the president. And if forced to its ultimate conclusion, the odds are rising that this is a battle that will end in ultimate defeat for Miers and for Bush.

One wonders how Dubya can possibly believe that Harriet Miers, no matter how close and valued a friend she is to him, is worth gambling his remaining presidency on - or that the kind of judge he promised in two national campaigns to appoint to the SCOTUS is not. I suppose one could ask if he even realizes what fighting for Miers with ten times the ferocity he ever mustered for all his shafted appellate court nominees, and John Roberts, combined is costing him in irreplacable political capital from the source of same he can least afford to lose.

It truly is a spectacle I could never have imagined a year ago - or, hell, even ten days ago. Unfortunately, while the Dubya I thought we knew would pull the plug for the sake of intra-party unity at the very least, that Dubya would also have never precipitated this intra-party hurricane in the first place.

And that's why I say that I can't guess how this nomination will turn out - other than that it won't be pulled. Which means, whether or not Miers ends up on the High Court, the GOP will be riven for the foreseeable future.