The Miers circus

October 25, 2005

To help prepare Harriet Miers for her confirmation hearings, the White House has arranged rehearsals in which Bush’s Supreme Court nominee faces practice questions so she’ll be prepared for the real thing. Is Miers ready? Not so much.

Behind the scenes, however, the comfort level is very low. Some White House officials are already worried that Miers’s rehearsals for her hearings are not proceeding smoothly, according to current and former administration sources who declined to be named because the sessions are secret.

If Miers can’t even impress her White House handlers, you know the Bush gang has a real problem. And when these guys get nervous, they get mean (via Kleiman).

Many longtime supporters of President Bush have been startled to get phone calls from allies of the president strongly implying that a failure to support Ms. Miers will be unhealthy to their political future. “The message in Texas is, if you aren’t for this nominee, you are against the president,” one conservative leader in that state told me. The pressure has led to more resentment than results.

I suppose it’s possible for a White House to handle a Supreme Court nomination with less skill and competency, but I just don’t see how.

In fact, conservative opposition gets better organized every day.

Two longtime leaders of the conservative movement yesterday called for the withdrawal of Harriet Miers’ nomination to the Supreme Court.

“We expected President Bush to appoint a woman with the opposite judicial philosophy and paper trail of Ruth Bader Ginsburg — our disappointment is acute,” said Phyllis Schlafly, founder and president of the St. Louis-based Eagle Forum.

So, in addition to WithdrawMiers.org we have a Catholic antiabortion organization called Fidelis launching a similar anti-Miers campaign; the Family Research Council, a leading religious right, is close to coming out formally against her; and David Frum and Linda Chavez starting BetterJustice.com, another site seeking Miers’s withdrawal.

As my friend Zoe noted, aren’t conservatives supposed to believe that every Bush nominee needs an up-or-down vote? Without exception?

Apparently that only applies to the nominees to which Dems object. It’s a movement based on principles — weak, malleable principles.

It is also interesting how Republicans are now calling on the White House to turn over internal documents regarding Miers’ work. Bush, at least, is being consistent and is refusing and so now the Right sees this as a way to end the Miers nomination – refuse to confirm her and get her to withdraw because of a lack of documents.

Of course, when Democrats filibustered Estrada for just that reason, they were accused of perverting the Constitution. And when they demanded such documents about Roberts, the Republicans told them the request was totally inappropriate and unjustified.

But now, apparently, the Republicans have discovered that the White House’s refusal to respect the other branches of government is kind of insulting and should not be tolerated.

And just in time … or else they would have had to confirm Miers.

Talk about luck!

  • Well, at least we won’t have to hear 10 choruses of “up or down vote.”

    Oh well, I was trying to do my best Frist impression (he always said it “uperdown vote”).

  • This has stopped being about Miers and become an exercise in pure politics. Everyone realizes the nomination is dead, and is trying to claim responsibility. The conservatives want to push Bush toward a more explicitly conservative pick so they claim she is too liberal, the Whitehouse wants to pull the nomination without getting burned too badly so they will set up a confrontation over executive priviledge, the Dems want this to be another unqualified crony story and the folks within the Whitehouse who want to make sure they are listened to next time are feeding that.

  • To be fair to people who probably don’t deserve it, it isn’t inconsistent to demand a withdrawal of a nomination you oppose and a vote on a nomination you support.

  • This incompetence would be funny save for the fact that these are the same people putting 150,000 of our troops in harms way and in charge of spending massive amounts of the country’s money. But for pure comic relief, I really hope these hearings go forth.

    Or not, maybe we could just have a sit-com version of the hearings produced by Bloodworth-Thomason and starring the mother from the 70s show. You could probably get Georgie to do a cameo as the “wacky president”, if of course that lady from the 70s show could arrange a meeting for him with Ashton Kutcher.

    Time to pop another oxy-contin, reality starting to seep in.

  • Seriously, lets not allow expectations to fall too low. At this rate if she doesnt make an ass of herself our media will say nonsense like she spoke so well.. and she exceeded all expectations..

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