{"id":7577,"date":"2006-06-02T13:03:41","date_gmt":"2006-06-02T17:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7577"},"modified":"2006-06-02T13:03:41","modified_gmt":"2006-06-02T17:03:41","slug":"harriet-miers-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/harriet-miers-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"Harriet Miers redux?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When [tag]Bush[\/tag] tapped<\/a> [tag]Henry Paulson[\/tag] to be the next [tag]Treasury[\/tag] [tag]Secretary[\/tag], the political world seemed to offer a collective cheer. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is not exactly a reliable Bush ally, pledged his full support<\/a> for the Paulson nomination, saying, “His experience, intelligence, and deep understanding of national and global economic issues make him the best pick America could have hoped for.” The Hill reported<\/a> that insiders from both parties predicted a “swift” [tag]confirmation[\/tag].<\/p>\n

But Matt Stoller mentioned<\/a> on Wednesday that, despite the fairly broad praise, Paulson might “get the [tag]Harriet Miers[\/tag] treatment” from some elements of the conservative movement. It turns out Stoller was on to something<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite the overwhelming approval of mainstream [tag]Republicans[\/tag] and Wall Street insiders of President Bush’s new treasury secretary pick, there is a budding campaign among conservative land-rights activists to find a senator who will place a [tag]hold[\/tag] on the [tag]nomination[\/tag] of Henry Paulson.<\/p>\n

“He’s a lefty Nature Conservancy nut,” says one conservative, outside-the-White House adviser who is part of an effort to lobby western GOP senators to fight the nomination. Of concern to the activists is Paulson’s position as chair of the Nature Conservancy and his move to donate Chilean land owned by Goldman Sachs, which he currently heads, to the organization.<\/p>\n

That donation is just one of several complaints land-owner rights groups and those opposed to environmental groups have against Paulson. Among the others: They want him to state at confirmation hearings that he is not a global warming zealot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It doesn’t help that Paulson’s wife has donated to a number of [tag]Democrats[\/tag], including Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaigns. For that matter, Paulson has been accurately described as a “[tag]conservationist[\/tag]<\/a>,” which is hardly a welcome description in conservative circles.<\/p>\n

Do Paulson’s far-right critics have a legitimate shot at derailing this nomination? Not really. But it’s kind of amusing to see them try to raise a fuss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When [tag]Bush[\/tag] tapped [tag]Henry Paulson[\/tag] to be the next [tag]Treasury[\/tag] [tag]Secretary[\/tag], the political world seemed to offer a collective cheer. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is not exactly a reliable Bush ally, pledged his full support for the Paulson nomination, saying, “His experience, intelligence, and deep understanding of national and global economic issues make him […]<\/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-7577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7577","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=7577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}