BRING ON THE MOTHER OF ALL JUDICIAL BATTLES
By Chuck Muth (10/27/05)
Some after-action comments on the Harriet Miers withdrawal...and then it's time to move on.
This was never really about Harriet Miers, her gender, whether she was
"qualified," what schools she went to, whether she was a "conservative," or
any of the other blather drummed up by the media. It was about a missed
opportunity. It was about the fact that there were SO MANY better
candidates for the job. It was about not taking ANY chances in filling the
"swing" seat on the Supreme Court of the United States.
In that regard, the President simply screwed up. As Dick Cheney would say,
"Big time." It happens. The man is human, after all. He now gets to take
a "mulligan." Let's hope he's learned from this mistake and nail the next
one straight down the fairway.
In this instance, unlike the "borking" of Judge Robert Bork or the
"high-tech lynching" of Clarence Thomas, the system worked. The President
nominated. The Senate was prepared to give the nominee a fair hearing,
followed by an up-or-down vote. The media reported. The citizens had
their say. And the nominee made her decision. This wasn't a breakdown in
the system. The criticism of Miss Miers was, for the most part fair and
deserved. No one went rooting through her trash cans to see what movies she'd
rented at Blockbuster.
As for Harriet Miers, she'll now enjoy great respect rather than derision by
her fellow conservatives for doing the right thing - for the President, for
the Republican Party, for the conservative movement and for the country.
Her decision had to sting, but in the long run, she'll be a much bigger
winner for it.
As for the Senate, especially Republicans in the Senate, they get to avoid a
messy intra-family confirmation battle in which the nominee and the
President were likely to be embarrassed. They also avoided what would
surely have been a gut-wrenching vote in which they would have had to choose
between their president and their conservative base of voters. You could
almost hear the collective sigh of relief from the Senate chamber this
morning.
As for the Democrats: Bravo, bravo. Collectively, they did what heretofore
no one would have believed possible: They kept their big, fat mouths shut.
They adhered to the age-old wisdom that when your enemy is committing
suicide, don't interfere. The true danger in this entire episode was that
the Left would come out swinging with their usual anti-conservative pabulum
and the Right would have felt obligated to come to her rescue. The Democrat
Party discipline in this whole matter is much to be admired.
But the biggest winners of all are the grassroots conservatives and
conservative organizations who have been toiling in the trenches at least
since the Bork debacle in an effort to remake the nation's highest court and
bring it back to its originalist roots as established by the Founders. This
was a HUGE win for the Right no matter how you slice it.
Me, I've been a critic of much of the Bush administration dating back to the
days when he first started dissing us Reaganites with his "compassionate
conservative" crud - followed by No Child Left Behind, amnesty for illegal
aliens, McCain-Feingold, spending through the roof, that prescription drug
benefit, the highway pork bill, etc., etc., etc.
So it was no big deal for me to come out opposed to this nomination just
hours after it was announced.
But a lot of other conservatives and conservative leaders with close ties to
the President and the White House - especially many social conservatives -
went WAY out on a limb in standing firmly against the Miers nomination. They
are to be applauded. It was a very tough and painful decision for many of
them to make. But when push came to shove (and the White House did a LOT of
pushing) the collective movement as a whole - social conservatives, economic
conservatives and libertarian conservatives - chose principle over blind
partisan loyalty and they should be proud and lauded for their actions.
There remains, of course, two big dangers here.
1.) The president gets his nose bent out of shape and decides to appoint
someone to fill this seat who is even WORSE than the Miers nomination. He
could still try to nominate his friend and current Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales. Gonzales, at least, has a better resume than Miers, but his
nomination would rile up social conservatives even more than Miers did. A
Gonzales nomination would be a smack in the eye which would likely result in
considerable GOP losses at the ballot box a year from now. I don't think
the president will make this same mistake twice. But you never know.
2.) The president could next nominate the type of high-quality conservative
candidate which the Right would salivate over and the Left would have a
conniption over, setting up the "Mother of All Confirmation Battles."
Truth be told, that is EXACTLY what SHOULD happen.
It's time to right the wrong that was done to Judge Bork. It's time to use
this "swing" seat to right the direction of the Court. A court which
reaffirmed special, rather than equal, treatment of minorities in college
admissions. A court which said the government can take away your property
and give it to someone else for economic reasons. A court which upheld a
congressional law infringing on citizens' right to free speech 30 days
before an election. A court which is out of control and out of line.
If the president does, in fact, nominate someone like that, the Left will be
loaded for bear. They're gonna kick like mules and bite like crocodiles. It's
gonna be an old-fashioned bar brawl, complete with mud, blood and beer. Oh,
what a glorious constitutional fight it will be.
But there's no guarantee the Right will come out on top of such a fight. We
still have a lily-livered Senate peppered with faux-Republicans such as
Lincoln Chafee, plus the infamous Gang of 14. The Right is going to need to
put this Miers mess behind them, regroup, reunite, rearm and gird their
collective loins for a knock 'em down, drag 'em out bench-clearing brawl
like there's no tomorrow.
Because there isn't.
Knives or guns?
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