The World Turned Upside Down

Read these two exerpts and then tell me the Body Snatchers haven't invaded when nobody was looking:

On [yester]day’s 700 Club broadcast, the Revrund Pat Robertson responded to criticism from the Right regarding the Miers nomination and also offered a stern warning to those conservative senators who might be thinking of voting against her.

Revrund Robertson suggested that people should look at who is supporting Miers before they doubt her conservative credentials. He named James Dobson, the Revrund Jerry Falwell, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Jay Sekulow of the Robertson-founded American Center for Law and Justice, and himself as proof of support for Miers’ nomination from the Right.

Okay, stop the tape, I have to break in here with a comment - and I can't believe I'm actually writing this - but evangelicals are not the whole of the Right. Just as religious convictions are not the same thing as judicial philosophy. Is Robby really saying that he wants judges that will impose Christian doctrine from the bench? Or that he's even indifferent to the prospect? Is he revealing himself to be the "theocrat" that his Christophobic enemies have always warned?

At the very least he and his brethren are showing themselves to be the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons of the Right - as well as appallingly gullible pawns of an openly cynical White House.

And, I suppose, five pieces of "evidence" in support of Hugh Hewitt's embarrassingly laboring contention that evangelicals will stay home next year if we don't get "our own seat" on the SCOTUS. Now he just has to somehow convince the 59% of us who aren't following along behind the President like good little wind-up toys.

Restart the tape:

Robertson concluded by noting: “These so-called movement conservatives don’t have much of a following, the ones that I’m aware of. And you just marvel, these are the senators, some of them who voted to confirm the general counsel of the ACLU to the Supreme Court, and she was voted in almost unanimously. And you say, ‘now they’re going to turn against a Christian who is a conservative picked by a conservative President and they’re going to vote against her for confirmation.’ Not on your sweet life, if they want to stay in office.”

Except that there's no evidence that Harriet Miers is a conservative, and, it seems, less and less all the time that the President who appointed her is, either. I have no reason to question her faith, but there are tens of millions of Americans with the very same faith, and only a maximum (at least right now) of nine SCOTUS slots. Doesn't that suggest that other winnowing criteria have to be employed? Like, say, judicial experience and expertise in constitutional law? And didn't Michael McConnell fit that bill as well as being a believer?

Oh, that's right, he can't hide his constitutionalism. And he has, you know, a penis. And has never been mountain biking at the ranch.

I've spent twenty-five years heaping indifference upon Pat Robertson, even as Christophobes in online political debate forums endlessly delighted in hanging him around my neck and assuming that he spoke for me. But you know what? He never did, even if some issues overlap does exist. And he certainly doesn't now.

And I can't believe that any GOP senators are sweating blood over his threats either.

Ditto that I have before me a statement from James "Serpenthead" Carville that doesn't compel me to reach for the Maalox:

Democratic Party strategist James Carville is predicting that Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers will withdraw her name from consideration rather than put the White House through a politically-bruising fight to win her confirmation.

Carville made the prediction at a book party Tuesday night that he and wife Mary Matalin hosted for Vince Flynn, author of the newly released thriller Consent to Kill.

According to one-time Rush Limbaugh researcher-turned best-selling author Joel Rosenberg - who was on hand for the event - Carville said Miers would voluntarily yank her name from contention rather than wait to be asked by the White House.

The top [sic] Democrat said he was basing his prediction on the fact that Miers is renowned for her loyalty - which means she won't want to see the President bloodied by a long and drawn out fight with his own base.

Note what I said above - Carville's comments didn't raise my blood pressure. I didn't say I necessarily agreed with them. It really depends upon whether Miers' professed loyalty to Bush is genuine or concocted to get something she wants - namely, a Supreme Court slot. If the former, Carville would presumably be right, although you could make the argument that by that standard she should have never accepted the appointment in the first place. On the other hand, given how taken by surprise the White House was by its base's negative reaction, perhaps Miers was equally as clueless. Which doesn't exactly corroborate the "record and qualifications" (read: intellect) the Bushies insist she has but which they have chosen to eschew in favor of having her handle snakes before press conferences.

If the latter, ain't no way Miers will quit when she's this close to paydirt, Dubya be damned.

Speaking of Double-H, he's trotted out another bogus argument in Miers' favor (via the Corner):

I spoke to Karl Rove an hour ago. His support for the Miers nomination is not merely enthusiastic, but adamant and even vehement. The judicial philosophy question? She has been a member of the White House's judicial selection committee for three years....Every judicial nomination the president has made for the past three years has come through this committee....The committee pores over the binders and then meets and debates the candidates, and a recommendation is made to the president. Rove described her role as detailed and deep....

Leaving aside for the time being the question of how vetting judicial candidates equates to immersion in constitutional law and related issues, there's one other problem with Hugh's (and Rove's) argument:

[Ed Whelan's] post on Hugh Hewitt’s account elicited this e-mail from someone [he] know[s] and trust[s]:

“Hewitt says that Miers was a member of the White House Judicial Selection Committee for the last three years, i.e., from October 2002 to the present. I attended virtually every meeting of the White House Judicial Selection Committee from the start of that period (October 2002) into the summer of 2003. Neither Harriet Miers nor any of her staff attended a single meeting during that period.”

Why would Miers have been involved with this committee anyway? She wasn't working for Alberto Gonzales, who can be credited with what Hewitt is trying to attribute to Miers. She was toiling in Chief of Staff Andy Card's office where she proved so bumblingly incompetent that Card couldn't wait to get rid of her (but knew that her cultivation of the President made it impossible to do by simply firing her - hence the jaw-droppingly two-faced recommendation to "kick her upstairs." Unless Card's brain has also turned to clam sauce. These days it seems to be an epidemic rivaling the bird flu).

So either Miers was only an honorary member of this committee, or she suddenly became its superstar the day that Whelan's source (who doubtless is still working in the White House and had better have deleted this email right after clicking the "send" button) moved on to other duties. Of which, of course, there's no evidence. And, if there was beyond what Rove has been told to say publicly, would still be of questionable at best relevance to what Miers' own judicial philosophy truly is. Assuming, you know, that she has one, which she has spent a lifetime concealing.

I don't know what Double-H has been drinking - or even if he drinks at all - but Everclear wouldn't produce the debilitating logic breakdowns I'm seeing wafting from his direction the past couple of weeks. Either that or he thinks we're all equally as impaired.

Gerard Bradley put it this way:

[H]ere is how I express my great regret at, and continuing suspicion of, practically the whole Miers' defense case: It has been an erratic mix of insults ("you guys are sexist"), irrelevancies ("she is such a good lady"), and invitations to shut up, sit back, and be governed ("Trust us, damn it!"). Spin and evasion so far. Are downright lies up next?

That Rubicon may already have been crossed weeks ago, actually.

Ironically, Bradley closes with this quip:

Maybe those in charge are not yet prepared to stanch the bleeding by withdrawing Miers's nomination. But they surely could — and should — now quit making matters even worse by treating conservatives puzzled....over this nominee as if, well, we were Democrats.

Is he kidding? If the White House were treating us like we were Democrats, he'd be on his knees kissing our asses with Michael Luttig instead....