IT’S BAY VS. BAY on Miers:
Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers utterly underwhelmed me. Understand I still support Robert Bork. I’d like to see Janice Rogers Brown on the Supreme Court. Kelo? With Justice Brown on the Court? No way.
But my wife disagrees.
A spirited dialogue ensues. But that dialogue isn’t just within a marriage — it’s within Bush’s coalition: Ed Morrissey writes in the Washington Post:
By nominating White House lawyer Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, George Bush has managed to accomplish what Al Gore, John Kerry, Tom Daschle and any number of Democratic heavyweights have been unable to do: He has cracked the Republican monolith. Split his own party activists. And how.
Read the whole thing. And note Ed’s wish that the debate stays as courteous as that within the Bay household.
UPDATE: Mark Steyn: “For what it’s worth, my sense is that Harriet Miers will be, case by case, a more reliable vote against leftist judicial activism than her mercurial predecessor, Sandra Day O’Connor.”
Jeff Goldstein, however, wonders why Bush nominated someone with a track record of supporting affirmative action. The answer to that, I think, comes from the Steyn column: “Bush, it seems ever more obvious, is the Third Wayer Clinton only pretended to be.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a table summarizing pro and con arguments on Miers, and here’s a summary of what was said on the Sunday morning talk shows. (Via Confirm Them).
MORE: Hugh Hewitt has a lengthy post in defense of Miers. Pejman Yousefzadeh observes:
While it may be unfair to have the roberts standard out there with which to judge future nominees, the fact is that the standard is out there and the Bush Administration’s new nominee will look relatively bad in comparison to the new Chief Justice. . . .
I agree with Hewitt that the rules of Constitutional law can be easily learned. But note his comment that “rules changes are troublesome and greatly contested.” He makes this point about golf, but it applies as well to Constitutional law which is “subject to much more frequent changes” than are the rules of golf. Quite so, which means that those who fight over whether or not there will be changes and what kind of changes might be implemented will have to possess the savvy and background to wage those battles successfully. And there is a vast difference between Harriet Miers’s ability to do that and the ability of John Roberts, Janice Rogers Brown, Michael Luttig and Michael McConnell (just to name a few) to be able to do that. Harriet Miers is simply not in their class.
The White House really should have thought this through.
STILL MORE: “Stealth” — but who’s being stealthed? “What he wants is a centrist on economic and liberty issues, supportive of federal power, coupled with an overriding commitment to the Christian Right’s social agenda. But to nominate someone who clearly has these qualifications would create a revolt in the Party, so we have Harriet Miers. The stealth is against us. I hope we realize it in time.”
Hmm. Maybe. Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin has a big roundup and observes:
I think that Hugh, like many of the Bush White House aides and supporters who are wielding the elitism card, seriously misreads and underestimates the opposition to this nomination coming from grass-roots conservatives. And that includes evangelicals. These are not elites.
I find the “elitism” argument rather unconvincing.
MORE STILL: Unhelpful reassurance: “Yes, this is a fundamental problem. Those most vocally opposed to the Miers nomination are strong social conservatives. But the attempt to win them back repels people who care about the proper functioning of the courts.”
Meanwhile, Bush is also losing support for other reasons.