Thursday, October 06, 2005

Tell Us How You Really Think

Ann Coulter's brutal. Fortunately she's on my side:
I eagerly await the announcement of President Bush's real nominee to the Supreme Court. If the president meant Harriet Miers seriously, I have to assume Bush wants to go back to Crawford and let Dick Cheney run the country.

Unfortunately for Bush, he could nominate his Scottish terrier Barney, and some conservatives would rush to defend him, claiming to be in possession of secret information convincing them that the pooch is a true conservative and listing Barney's many virtues – loyalty, courage, never jumps on the furniture ...

Bush has no right to say "Trust me." He was elected to represent the American people, not to be dictator for eight years. Among the coalitions that elected Bush are people who have been laboring in the trenches for a quarter-century to change the legal order in America. While Bush was still boozing it up in the early '80s, Ed Meese, Antonin Scalia, Robert Bork and all the founders of the Federalist Society began creating a farm team of massive legal talent on the right.

To casually spurn the people who have been taking slings and arrows all these years and instead reward the former commissioner of the Texas Lottery with a Supreme Court appointment is like pinning a medal of honor on some flunky paper-pusher with a desk job at the Pentagon – or on John Kerry – while ignoring your infantrymen doing the fighting and dying. . .

Conservatives from elite schools have already been subjected to liberal blandishments and haven't blinked. These are right-wingers who have fought off the best and the brightest the blue states have to offer. The New York Times isn't going to mau-mau them – as it does intellectual lightweights like Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee – by dangling fawning profiles before them. They aren't waiting for a pat on the head from Nina Totenberg or Linda Greenhouse. To paraphrase Archie Bunker, when you find a conservative from an elite law school, you've really got something.

However nice, helpful, prompt and tidy she is, Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on "The West Wing," let alone to be a real one. Both Republicans and Democrats should be alarmed that Bush seems to believe his power to appoint judges is absolute. This is what "advice and consent" means.
Read the whole thing.

5 comments:

SC&A said...

"Bush has no right to say 'trust me.' He was elected to represent the American people, not to be dictator for eight years."

Excuse me? Since when do we rule by consensus? When we ELECT a public official we are indeed telling that representative that we DO trust his judgement.

SO far, Mr Bush has proven to be a more than capable, if not perfect, President. He has elicited the trust of most Americans in not one but TWO elections.

As I have said, you don't pull the rug out from under a winning quaterback because you don't like a play he calls.

@nooil4pacifists said...

Even the excellent can make mistakes. The way the MSM treats conservatives, we have to be extra good even to show up on their radar. And that goes double on the supposedly non-political Supreme Court: conservatives have to be able both to outsmart the liberal wing and resist the left-wing seduction of Linda Greenhouse. We have no reason to believe Miers is qualified to do either.

SCA, a lifetime appointment to the most important job in America requires more than "trust me." Conservatives, especially conservatives lawyers who have worked so hard for so long to reverse liberal judicial activism, deserve better.

SC&A said...

Honestly Carl, I think there is more here than meets the eye. The President would not have made that huge an error.

I just don't see Mr Bush as a 'sellout.' If anything he has proven himself to be loyal to his cause and beliefs.

Stan said...

Unless there is some hidden experience and high-calibre performance, Miers is about as qualified as Matlock. Bush either blew it or caved, a disturbing nomination.

@nooil4pacifists said...

Stan: Hilarious line. I thought of Grandpa, in the Sideshow Bob Roberts episode of the Simpsons, yelling "Matlock!"