{"id":5595,"date":"2005-10-21T09:53:09","date_gmt":"2005-10-21T13:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5595"},"modified":"2005-10-21T09:53:09","modified_gmt":"2005-10-21T13:53:09","slug":"senators-tell-miers-dont-call-us-well-call-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/senators-tell-miers-dont-call-us-well-call-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Senators tell Miers: ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you’"},"content":{"rendered":"

When a Supreme Court nominee wants to win over lawmakers, he or she tries to use a combination of charm and intelligence in what are called “courtesy calls.” As Byron York explained<\/a>, one of the strategists working on Harriet Miers’ behalf said these calls may be courteous, but that’s not enough to help. (via Kevin<\/a>)<\/p>\n

“The meetings with the senators are going terribly. On a scale of one to 100, they are in negative territory. The thought now is that they have to end….Obviously the smart thing to do would be to withdraw the nomination and have a do-over as soon as possible. But the White House is so irrational that who knows? As of this morning, there is a sort of pig-headed resolve to press forward, cancel the meetings with senators if necessary, and bone up for the hearings.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Apparently, the White House got the message<\/a> — Miers won’t be stopping by Senate offices for any more embarrassing chats.<\/p>\n

Harriet Miers — whose courtesy calls with senators in their Capitol Hill offices have been more chaotic than courteous — has finished the tour, the White House has told congressional aides.<\/p>\n

Miss Miers will spend the next two weeks cramming for her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Republican Senate staffers working on the nomination told The Washington Times yesterday.<\/p>\n

The meetings have been fraught with misunderstandings and disagreements, giving ammunition to detractors, both liberal and conservative, that Miss Miers is in over her head.<\/p>\n

“No one is walking out of these meetings thinking they’ve just met with a star,” a Republican Judiciary staffer said yesterday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s my question: exactly how stubborn is the White House? Do they hear the complaints and dig in harder, or do they slowly begin to realize that they need an exit strategy?
\n
\nFor what it’s worth, Charles Krauthammer offered the Bush gang a pretty good way out<\/a>. The Senate needs to review Miers’ White House legal work; the White House can’t give up the docs; so a convenient excuse arises.<\/p>\n

That creates a classic conflict, not of personality, not of competence, not of ideology, but of simple constitutional prerogatives: The Senate cannot confirm her unless it has this information. And the White House cannot allow release of this information lest it jeopardize executive privilege.<\/p>\n

Hence the perfectly honorable way to solve the conundrum: Miers withdraws out of respect for both the Senate and the executive’s prerogatives, the Senate expresses appreciation for this gracious acknowledgment of its needs and responsibilities, and the White House accepts her decision with the deepest regret and with gratitude for Miers’s putting preservation of executive prerogative above personal ambition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My hunch is the president won’t accept it. The more people say Miers is a disaster, the more Bush will insist she’s going on the Court. Brash arrogance clouds one’s judgment on such issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When a Supreme Court nominee wants to win over lawmakers, he or she tries to use a combination of charm and intelligence in what are called “courtesy calls.” As Byron York explained, one of the strategists working on Harriet Miers’ behalf said these calls may be courteous, but that’s not enough to help. (via Kevin) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}