{"id":5653,"date":"2005-10-27T10:36:14","date_gmt":"2005-10-27T14:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5653"},"modified":"2005-10-27T10:36:14","modified_gmt":"2005-10-27T14:36:14","slug":"interesting-timing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/interesting-timing\/","title":{"rendered":"Interesting timing"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is probably tin-foil hat territory, so forgive a quick flight of fancy, but I’m wondering about the timing of the Harriet Miers withdrawal. The confirmation hearings were still a couple of weeks away and, as recently as yesterday<\/i>, the White House and some key allies were strategizing about an aggressive new approach<\/a> to advance Miers’ nomination, including the possibility of a high-profile speech intended to assuage the criticism.<\/p>\n

And yet, a day later, Miers’ nomination is no more. Nothing happened yesterday that was so unique that it necessarily doomed her chances, which makes me wonder if perhaps the announcement — at least the timing of the announcement — was driven by a different motivation.<\/p>\n

The LA Times noted<\/a> today that the White House strategy in dealing with the Plame scandal, in the short term, is “try to change the subject to something — anything — else.” Might this include a renewed focus on the Supreme Court vacancy? I don’t see why not.<\/p>\n

Am I suggesting that Miers withdrew today simply because we may learn about Plame indictments? I’m suggesting it’s certainly possible. There’s ample evidence that the White House will use Supreme Court announcements to shift attention<\/a> away from the Plame story; this might just be another example.<\/p>\n

The political world has become consumed with the leak scandal and believes indictments are imminent. As of this morning, there’s something new to talk about — Miers is gone, who’ll be her replacement, will the GOP base be satisfied, etc. Depending on when Bush announces his new choice, speculation will be a pretty big story, followed by more coverage of whomever the new nominee is.<\/p>\n

To be sure, if indictments are issued, the uproar will be intense, and there’s little Bush can do about it. But the Miers angle, at a minimum, divides attention. <\/p>\n

I obviously don’t know for sure if this is what’s driven the Miers withdrawal, but the timing is curious. I’m just throwing this out there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is probably tin-foil hat territory, so forgive a quick flight of fancy, but I’m wondering about the timing of the Harriet Miers withdrawal. The confirmation hearings were still a couple of weeks away and, as recently as yesterday, the White House and some key allies were strategizing about an aggressive new approach to advance […]<\/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-5653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5653","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=5653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5653\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}