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October 10, 2005
Still Underwhelmed
Hugh Hewitt, who I normally like quite a bit, makes some unconvincing arguments in support of Harriet Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court.
There are quite a few pundits who feel the president has blundered, some badly. Time will tell, as will other factors such as the number of additional vacancies he gets to fill, and his nominees for those slots.The major problem I have with the "time will tell" argument is that in this scenario, if Miers is confirmed and turns out to be more O'Connor than Scalia, there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. We'd be stuck with a wishy-washy by the seat of her pants jurist for a decade or two, and the president would have squandered his chance to impact the court in any significant way.
But only a disingenuous pundit will argue that it is better to lose ground in the elections of 2006 than to maintain or gain ground then.Some pundits are indeed arguing that the Republicans deserve to lose in 2006. While I'm sympathetic to the argument that Republicans are disappointing in so many ways, I'm not willing to allow a party controlled by unserious people such as Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi to assume power in Congress.
To put it bluntly: There is zero advantage and plenty of harm in defeating Miers, including the very obvious encouragement of the previously fever-swamp argument that Bush was a lame duck.So now we're supposed to care what Kos, Atrios and the MoveOn crowd think? President Bush will determine the status of his presidency from this point on. His selection of this cipher candidate displays a lame-duck mentality already instead of a willingness to engage in the needed fight over the proper role of the judiciary.
It is also certain that a crucial slice of the evangelical base will perceive in the rejection of Miers a rejection of their status as equal partners in the governing coalition. Even if that slice is small --and it does not appear small to me at this point-- it is strategic.Bull. I'm an evangelical, and I think this is a terrible nomination. If evangelicals are so petulant as to jump ship on Bush simply because 'one of their own' isn't nominated, then one has to ask why such an easily-offended slice of the electorate has been allowed to assume such a large measure of control over a political party. Personally, I don't believe all evangelicals, or even a majority of them, would be offended if Bush withdrew the nomination of a woman whose judicial philosophy may not be all that conservative in the first place.
Posted by slublog at October 10, 2005 03:55 PM
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