The White House is clearly in scramble mode trying to get religious right leaders on board with the MIers nomination, so much so that they have sent envoys to meet with the leaders of various organizations in groups to attempt to calm their fears and get them on board. The Washington Post reports that it's not working very well:
The conservative uprising against President Bush escalated yesterday as Republican activists angry over his nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court confronted the president's envoys during a pair of tense closed-door meetings...
At one point in the first of the two off-the-record sessions, according to several people in the room, White House adviser Ed Gillespie suggested that some of the unease about Miers "has a whiff of sexism and a whiff of elitism." Irate participants erupted and demanded that he take it back. Gillespie later said he did not mean to accuse anyone in the room but "was talking more broadly" about criticism of Miers.
The tenor of the two meetings suggested that Bush has yet to rally his own party behind Miers and underscores that he risks the biggest rupture with the Republican base of his presidency. While conservatives at times have assailed some Bush policy decisions, rarely have they been so openly distrustful of the president himself.
Leaders of such groups as Paul M. Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation and the Eagle Forum yesterday declared they could not support Miers at this point, while columnist George Will decried the choice as a diversity pick without any evidence that Miers has the expertise and intellectual firepower necessary for the high court...
Weyrich, who hosted one of the meetings, said afterward that he had rarely seen the level of passion at one of his weekly sessions. "This kind of emotional thing will not happen" often, Weyrich said. But he feared the White House advisers did not really grasp the seriousness of the conservative grievance. "I don't know if they got the message. I didn't sense that they really understand where people were coming from."...
The main complaints cited at the Norquist and Weyrich sessions yesterday, according to several accounts, centered on Miers's lack of track record and the charge of cronyism. "It was very tough and people were very unhappy," said one person who attended. Another said much of the anger resulted from the fact that "everyone prepared to go to the mat" to support a strong, controversial nominee and Miers was a letdown. As a result, a third attendee observed, Gillespie and Mehlman came in for rough treatment: "They got pummeled. I've never seen anything like it."
Is it wrong that I'm really enjoying watching this implosion? Honestly, I'm finding it immensely entertaining. This isn't just disagreement, there is some serious vitriol being lobbed at the President by his conservative supporters. I don't think Bush could have screwed this up so badly if he was trying to do it. It's kind of like when you have a friend who has been dating a total loser, and the only person who didn't know they were a loser was them. Then suddenly they come to their senses and dump the person and you can only think, "How did you not see this until now?"
Suddenly I'm hearing from conservatives that Bush is arrogant and stuck in his own little world, being fed information by his aides but ignorant of what's going on in the real world because he lacks curiosity and intellectual interest. And all I can say is, "And you're just now figuring this out?" Suddenly George Will is saying that the President "has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution." No kidding. I knew that years ago, which is why I've never taken his ignorant bleatings about "judicial activism" or his meaningless blather about "judicial temperament" and not "legislating from the bench" the least bit seriously. Welcome to the party folks. What took you so long?
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Ed, you and I will both go to hell for our enjoyment of this fiasco.
I feel guilty about it. I care too much about the court to feel good Mr. Bush's problems with his base.
But I feel good, nonetheless.
I like how if you disagree with the president and your a liberal then you're unpatriotic. But if you disagree with him and your a conservative, then you just need to be enlightened.
I've been saying to my Evangelical brethren,
"-I told you so!....You suckers!" and also that they are getting a taste of what it was like to be a gay moderate Democrat who supported and trusted Bush in his initial run for the White House, only to see him do an about-face on "Compassionate Conservatism" and bowing to religious zealots once he obtained office. He's just not a trustworthy man.
The thing that crax me up is that they are complaining about her lack of a "paper trail", some way to confirm her judicial "philosophy". And that lack of verifiable historical positions on hot button social issues is EXACTLY the reason the bush crew picked her. Senate Democrats would have gone to the mat over Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen, but they will never have a reason to fight anywhere near that hard over Miers. They really ought to shut up, we know Bush picked her because she's on the same page on issues like Roe and Privacy and Affirmative action, but will never have to say so. This makes her the perfect "stealth" appointee. The radical religious right will actually be doing itself a disservice by defeating her appointment. Just look at what Dobson is saying...
mikey
Bush has lost Norquist? Holy fuck. I didn't think he cared about anything but tax cuts.
How exactly does one 'legislate from the bench'? Last I checked the judiciary branch lacked the ability to create or pass legislature.
I think it's hilarious that a President with approval ratings at the Jimmy Carter level has made a nomination and his best defense for her is "Trust me."
Of course, the conservatives wouldn't be in such a tizzy if they thought Roberts was worth a pitcher of warm spit. But they don't think he is, and so they think they don't have control of any part of the Supreme Court.
I think they underestimate Roberts.
But I am troubled, and a bit frightened, that after 19 years of Rehnquist's rule, they think the Supreme Court needs to be pushed farther to the right. Hell, if they want someone more conservative and reactionary than John Roberts, they'd have to exhume Benito Mussolini or Francisco Franco.* And they wouldn't be eligible because they're not citizens.
* Now, you stop thinking what you're thinking about Robert Bork. Shame on you. Mussolini would never have such a scraggly beard, even after exhumation.
Somehow i am getting the picture that Rove and Card et al are much more engaged in protecting their own arses than in insuring a better governance of this nation. Bush might just have been left on his own to pick Miers--well given that she was the person who was in charge of picking through the short list, she probably picked herself.
Breaking AP report:
Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th-hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.
Two recent examples of "legislating from the Bench:"
The "Keep Terri Schiavo Alive" courtcases were all attempts at "judicial activism" since, as each court that reviewed the case affirmed, the whole process was performed in strict concordance with existing Florida Law. To go against the court ordered removal of the feeding tube would have subverted the Florida Law.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court was asked by the Bush Administration to "legislate from the bench" to nullify the vote of the people of Oregon. They asked the court to extend a law written to prevent drug addiction and drug pushing to keep Oregon doctors from prescribing life ending drugs. Congress had specifically rejected language to prevent this sort of thing, so the Bush Administration was asking the court to broaden the law against Congress' actions.
(My favorite question came from one of the justices: If we find for you does this mean that any doctor performing a lethal injection as a method of capital punishment should lose his license?
But Franco is still dead!
I think I finally figured out Winger opposition to Miers. If she really delivers as promised, the Supremes will overturn Roe V. Wade and the NeoCons will have to make good on decades of promises to make abortion illegal again. They they'll have to face the voters.