{"id":5631,"date":"2005-10-25T12:54:48","date_gmt":"2005-10-25T16:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5631"},"modified":"2005-10-25T12:54:48","modified_gmt":"2005-10-25T16:54:48","slug":"the-miers-circus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-miers-circus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Miers circus"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a> (via Kleiman<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In fact, conservative opposition gets better organized<\/a> every day.
\n<\/p>\n

Two longtime leaders of the conservative movement yesterday called for the withdrawal of Harriet Miers’ nomination to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

As my friend Zoe noted<\/a>, aren’t conservatives supposed to believe that every Bush nominee needs an up-or-down vote? Without exception?<\/p>\n

Apparently that only applies to the nominees to which Dems object. It’s a movement based on principles — weak, malleable principles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/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-5631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5631","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=5631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}