Many conservatives have practically begged the White House for any kind of evidence of Harriet Miers’ allegiance to a right-wing agenda. Instead of speeches or articles to set the right’s mind at ease, evidence keeps popping up in the other direction.
Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers said in a speech more than a decade ago that “self-determination” should guide decisions about abortion and school prayer and that in cases where scientific facts are disputed and religious beliefs vary, “government should not act.”
In a 1993 speech to a Dallas women’s group, Miers talked about abortion, the separation of church and state, and how the issues play out in the legal system. “The underlying theme in most of these cases is the insistence of more self-determination,” she said. “And the more I think about these issues, the more self-determination makes sense.”
In that speech and others in the early 1990s when she was president of the Texas Bar Association, Miers also defended judges who order lawmakers to address social concerns. While judicial activism is derided by many conservatives, Miers said that sometimes “officials would rather abandon to the courts the hard questions so they can respond to constituents: I did not want to do that — the court is making me.”
In case the chorus of conservative complaints needed something new to whine about, this should do the job nicely.
For what it’s worth, as speeches like this one surface, it only adds insult to injury for conservatives who are worried about Miers anyway. At this point, it sounds like Senate Republicans are inching closer to outright opposition.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said, “I am uneasy about where we are.” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) called Republican sentiment toward Ms. Miers’s nomination “a question mark.” Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) said he needed “to get a better feel for her intellectual capacity and judicial philosophy, core competence issues,” and added, “I certainly go into this with concerns.” According to Senate GOP aides, Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) have both “privately raised questions about her judicial philosophy.”
Sessions, whose knee-jerk response in support of Bush’s requests is usually pretty reliable, seemed to sum things up nicely.
Asked if the debate had become “one-sided,” with too few defending Ms. Miers, Senator Sessions, the Alabama Republican, struggled for words, then pushed a button for a nearby elevator in the Capitol building and told an aide, “Get me out of here.”
I suspect that’s a common sentiment on the Hill right now.