Miers Elsewhere

UPDATES: below, Footnote added 11pm

MaxedOutMama and SCA posted their take on the nomination (with back-and-forth in comments), both of which are substantially more upbeat than mine.¹ And Beldar's still blogging up a pro-Miers storm, including a pointer to quotes from a favorable profile of Miers in the December 1996 Texas Lawyer.

More:

Beth, at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, says all your base are belong to us:

I find it also amusing how the Miers-bashers claim the title of “the base.” WRONG. I’m “the base,” that is, not one to pick up my marbles and leave because of whatever. It’s also ironic that many (but certainly not all) of those who are complaining about Miers were (again) the rabble-rousers attacking others within the party during the Terri Schiavo “debate” (or rather, brawl). Remember THAT one? I certainly do. What about the “Not One Dime” bullshit, where they/you said “not one dime” to the GOP because of the filibuster deal? THAT is the base? Sorry, but those who threaten to leave the party are absolutely NOT “the base.” They are, to be blunt, selfish. There are a lot more people in the GOP who fully recognize that there are religious conservatives, moderate conservatives, libertarians, etc. in the party and can handle the differences without abandoning the party due to them. Anyone who expects to get their way about everything all the time is, again, to be blunt, a selfish, spoiled child.

Thomas at RedState.Org pens a powerful post to the contrary:

The President has nominated Harriet Miers to the United States Supreme Court. We have no indication that she will overturn Roe, no indication that she has a single jurisprudential principle at all. Let us not put too fine a point on it: We have been betrayed. We must now hope and pray -- on scant evidence -- that Miers is a truly stealth Scalia, a woman who will overturn the edifice of Roe, a woman who will rise up with righteous fury at the mere mention of the words "an historic voyage of interpretation," when used in the same sentence with the word "Constitution."

A betrayal this surely is, for you have taken the single thing from us that we have worked all these years to achieve, and used it as a mere bauble to gather our votes, knowing that when the time came to meet your part of our pact, you would decline, promising us that it would be just a little longer. You have made us guess, and hope, and pray, that Miers is at least a shadow of the "judges in the mold of Scalia and Thomas" that we were promised. And Miers's nomination is merely the topper on a long line of smaller betrayals.

People of good faith can believe that this is a good nomination, or that the Party has earned enough credibility to take a leap of faith here. I do not. Let me be clear about something: I care precisely nothing about Miers's "qualifications." . . I care, however, that we know nothing about her – or at least, nothing that matters. The single most fundamental question is this: Does she have a coherent, concrete philosophy? If not, she will surely be a return to the bad old days of Sandy O’Connor, and we have no guarantee that she will not be buffeted by the egos around her, some of whom actually have theories of jurisprudence. (Justices Souter, Kennedy, and Stevens are therefore no danger to her, except insofar as they hang out at the nerd table in the cafeteria together.)

And don't miss former Bush speechwriter David Frum at NRO:

I have been and remain a supporter of this administration and this president. For the past three years, I have been speaking and writing in defense of this administration's goals and this president's character. . .

I have spent hours over the past three days listening to conservative jurists on this topic - people who have devoted their lives to fighting battles for constitutionalism, for tort reform, for color-blind justice, people who fought the good fight to get Bork, Scalia, Thomas, and now Roberts onto the high Court.

Their reaction to the nomination has been almost perfectly unanimous: Disappointment at best, dismay and anger at worst. Here's the tough truth, and it will become more and more important as the debate continues: There is scarcely a single knowledgeable legal conservative in Washington who supports this nomination. There are many who are prepared to accept her, reluctantly, as the president's choice. Some still hope that maybe it won't turn out as bad as it looks. But ask them: "Well what if the president had consulted you on this choice," and the answer is almost always some version of: "I would have thought he was joking."

Why do so many fine conservative lawyers object to Miers? This oped by John Yoo gives a hint. John was one of the most brilliant lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice in the first Bush term. He was a stalwart defender of the president's war powers - and he has taken his share of abuse in the press for fighting for his conservative principles.

Yoo's piece is very carefully phrased. Indeed, given the heavy hints that the administration has been throwing out recently, it must have taken strong courage for this man who is himself eminently qualified for an appellate judgeship, to have gone even as far as he did. But listen:

[A]ccording to press reports, she did not win a reputation as a forceful conservative on issues such as the administration's position on stem cell research or affirmative action.

Yoo is referring here to the case of Grutter v. Bollinger, a challenge to the constitutionality of preferential treatment for minorities in education. Many in the administration wanted to take a strong stand in favor of color-blindness. In the end, the administration faltered and argued that racial preferences are okay, up to a point. It is hard to imagine a more central issue to modern legal conservatives. Where was Miers? On the wrong side.

Inside the White House, Miers was best known, not as a conservative, not as a legal thinker, but as a petty bureaucrat.

Still More:

From today's Washington Times:

[C]onservatives said they had mobilized grass-roots support and raised money to wage advertising campaigns on behalf of a prominent nominee with a documented strict-constructionist record. Instead, they complained, they got Miss Miers, with no such record and a "trust me" from Mr. Bush.

Participants at both the Norquist and Weyrich meetings complained that, in naming Miss Miers, an ex-Democrat who once headed the Texas Bar Association, Mr. Bush bypassed a score of highly qualified and respected jurists with clearly established conservative records. Activists accused the president of running from a fight that conservatives have waited decades to wage -- and in the process, show Americans the importance of judicial restraint and courts that respect the rule of law.

"This was a teaching moment, a chance for the debate on the role of the court and precisely how we want to bring it back to respecting the Constitution," Christopher C. Horner, an attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told Mr. Gillespie. "Instead, the president punted, on one issue where we least want to guess [about the outcome]."

Don't miss John Hawkins's extensive post on Right Wing News rebutting pro-Harriet arguments. An earlier Hawkins piece challenges the wait-and-see crowd:

[W]e're not going to learn anything about the candidate at the "job interview."

Things she may have said or written as a lawyer? It doesn't mean anything because she's taking a position for a client. Her time in the White House? Bush is citing executive privilege and saying he won't release any documents she wrote in the White House. What about future rulings on important cases like Roe v. Wade or Kelo v. New London? She won't talk about those cases on the grounds that she may have to rule on them as a Supreme Court justice.

So unless there's the equivalent of an Anita Hill hiding in the wings or Miers completely cracks under the pressure, we won't learn much about Miers at the hearings. In other words, it'll be a Rorschach test. There will be a lot of long speeches from Senators, some hostile questions, Miers will dodge them all, and then people will look at the inkblots and see what they want to see.

That was acceptable for a candidate like Roberts. Although he may not have had a long enough track record for many people's tastes, he was universally regarded as an absolutely brilliant lawyer and there were a few encouraging legal tidbits conservatives got to see from his time in the Reagan administration and on the bench. Moreover, before the nomination, Roberts was considered to be a highly regarded, top tier candidate.

On the other hand, Harriet Miers is feather light in the qualifications department compared to the other nominees that were being seriously considered. There was no one on the right before her nomination that considered her to be a great candidate and, quite frankly, few of the conservatives backing her today seem terribly enthusiastic about it.

Finally, Templar Pundit:

In terms of political strategy, this is a serious mistake. The Republican base is split between being enraged and being bored with the nomination. While not justified, it will be impossible to get around the charge of cronyism and the GOP will be stuck with Miers on the bench for years to come.

In contrast to John Roberts, we don't know where Miers stands on any major constitutional issues. With Roberts we knew his qualifications and we were able to get a pretty good understanding of his philosophy before his hearings.

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¹ In another post urging calm, SCA characterized my argument as "erudite and remarkably non pompous," which I appreciate and aspire to.

(via A Certain Slant of Light)