Headline in the ABC news:
Senate Dems Defend Miers on Top Court Nod. Buoyed no doubt, by Robert Bork’s opposition. Enemy of my enemy, and all that. Which, now that I think on it, clears a lot of things up with respect to Howard Dean and the War on Terror, but never mind…
Taranto chimes in:
When President Bush nominated Harriet Miers on Monday, we saw it as a missed opportunity. It left us underwhelmed, not appalled. But having spent last evening communing here with some 1,000 conservatives at National Review’s 50th anniversary dinner, we see a political disaster in the making.
While the Weekly Standard’s William Kristol channels Lenin, of all people, in “What Is To Be Done?”
George W. Bush’s nomination of White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court was at best an error, at worst a disaster. There is no need now to elaborate on Bush’s error. He has put up an unknown and undistinguished figure for an opening that conservatives worked for a generation to see filled with a jurist of high distinction. There is a gaping disproportion between the stakes associated with this vacancy and the stature of the person nominated to fill it.
But the reaction of conservatives to this deeply disheartening move by a president they otherwise support and admire has been impressive. There has been an extraordinarily energetic and vigorous debate among conservatives as to what stance to take towards the Miers nomination, a debate that does the conservative movement proud. The stern critics of the nomination have, in my admittedly biased judgment, pretty much routed the half-hearted defenders. In the vigor of their arguments, and in their willingness to speak uncomfortable truths, conservatives have shown that they remain a morally serious and intellectually credible force in American politics.
Shorter version – Question: Shall we destroy the (conservative) village in order to save it?
Answer: Yes.
Must be a revolutionary thing.
Hugh Hewitt tries to find the pony in the pile of… manure:
Perhaps the left will save the right, again. The undeniable nature of the nominee’s moral views must alarm the left, and the hearings will give them no cause for relaxation. Will Ralph and Nan simply allow a potentially majority-changing vote to waltz onto the SCOTUS? Long experience tells me that if Miers is unopposed by “the groups,” and goes on to become another Thomas, there will be no repairing the breech on the left, even though the division on the right will be cured rather quickly.
While it’s not at all clear what Lileks thinks. Even in a screedblog. Which is passing strange.
For those of us in the middle arc of the empire, well: Courage. Hope for the best. We are made of the same stuff the stars are made of. So is Harriet Miers. Selah.
Harriet E. Miers Helped Bring Feminist Speakers to Southern Methodist
“the middle arc of the empire”
Are you familiar with the paintings of Thomas Cole, eg, the Course of Empire?
http://gcruse.typepad.com/the_owners_manual/2003/12/thomas_cole_cou.html
I get the same feeling looking at that course of paintings that I do from listening to Wagnerian opera. Something like the giantism of Chernobyl-radiated vegetation or Albert Speer’s overwhelming architectural designs for Hitler’s postwar Berlin.
Of course, my exultation is non-Nazi. I think.
Maybe I’m reading the wrong blogs, but I don’t understand all the hand-wringing among the conservatives. We know almost nothing about her philosophies and legal analysis. Let’s find out, then the conservatives can go to pieces, and I’ll join right in.
Villainous Company has a great post on this that offers a lot of perspective, I think.
G – a fascinating series, more here.
Beth, I read Cassies post, and generally agree with much of what she writes. This however, seems like nothing but an argument by appeal to authority. The question is not whether the president has the authority to chooes anyone he wishes, but rather whether this was the best choice for the country. The fact that we know “almost nothing” about her philosophy and legal analysis is because there is nothing, apparently, out there to learn. That doesn’t by itself testify to her being the best possible choice.
She is the John Kerry of Supreme Court nominees, potentially: While he was chosen only because he was electable, she may have been chosen chiefly because she was confirmable.
Pundits on the right are not embarrassed to be conservative, and wanted to have this discussion now, while majorities adhere.
Lex, I hope you are not right but you may be.
Ms. Miers is his choice. He picked one of his pickers. All the rest of the info on her available to date we’ve all seen. We all agree she wasn’t on the A-list.
The deed is done.
I submit if she doesn’t measure up that can easily be uncovered during the hearings and inevitable grillings..there are still procedures available for “outraged conservative” senators to vote- up or down. Nuclear option neither required nor desired.
If it’s a down vote Bush will have no one to blame but himself…and the picker.
Now all this talk/visual about fall of empire, etc. I’d leave tommorrow if somebody asked me to go with my Model 70 and root out some Islamofacists, but I’ll be dammed if I go to high warble over this nomination- yet.
Harriet may show up at your doorstep for a reckoning…being compared to J-fn-Kerry is fightin’ words!
B2