Wild About Harriet

The furor over the president’s nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court is striking in that it has come most vehemently from the right. The ferocity of the invective, coming from the usual suspects of pundits and “experts”, has further exposed the complete hypocrisy of Bush’s conservative Republican “base”, an increasingly splintered army of medievalist zealots, political acolytes and apologists, that has been hyped into somewhat of an urban myth by the supplicant media.

In the midsummer pundit fest that followed the John Roberts nomination, whenever a critical voice was feebly raised--by a neutered Charles Schumer, or a self-indulgent Joe Biden,-- the mob on the right would scream, in its usual self-righteous indignation,“executive discretion!”, i.e.,the President is granted by the Constitution the power to appoint to the Court anyone he pleases. Very true. But it is also the constitutional responsibility of the Senate to advise and consent, in other words to approve or disapprove of the nomination. However, to the true believers, the “base”, to question this President, this self-proclaimed “war president,” is unpatriotic, un-American, “angry”, and by ultimate extension, blasphemous.

Roberts was somewhat of a political stealth candidate. With no Borkian paper trail to bedevil him he was, due to his yeoman’s service in the Reagan-Bush administration, given a pass by the neocons. His tribal loyalty seemed beyond reproach, given his pro bono work on behalf of W in the Florida election debacle of 2000, which led to Antonin Scalia’s laughable pilfering of the fourteenth amendment and states rights in Bush v. Gore, ensuring the anointment of the W. to the presidency.

Now Bush has nominated an uber stealth candidate and the “base” has circled the wagons--Peggy Noonan, she of the “thousand points of light” from Bush I, has urged Miers to “take the hit” and withdraw so the president could pick “one of the outstanding jurists thoughtful conservatives have long touted.”

In other words, we have a short list of true believers that are part of “our tribe.” Choose from one of them. To do otherwise will alienate the rest of the tribe.

From syndicated columnist (and Fox News contributor) Charles Krauthammer, “If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her.”

George Will chimed in with his turgidly precise prose, (Will’s columns are nothing, if not boringly precise). Yawn.

What has the poor Mrs. Miers done to warrant such derision from those within her own camp?

Not having been a judge, she has no extant record of judicial rulings, specifically Roe v. Wade, the bete boire of the hard right. Yet, there are judges waiting in the right wings, such as federal appeals court judges Edith Jones, Edith Clement, and Janice Rogers Brown, (blessed by Noonan and adored by the right), judges that can be counted on to overturn Roe v. Wade, judges that Bush, inexplicably, has chosen to ignore.

So here stands the majority party on the horns of a dilemma: support the president, alienate the base, and take a chance on the unknown Miers, or force a withdrawal of the nomination and further weaken an administration which, in the wake of Katrina, and mired in corruption and scandal (Rove, Frist and DeLay, three rapidly dimming points of light), is on the ropes. Either way Bush takes a direct hit, which he cannot afford.

The irony is amusing. In an effort to thwart “judicial activism” the neocons revert to their own brand of the same. Blinded by their cause, they march arrogantly onward, oblivious of the political consequences. Bush will dig in with his usual cowboy swagger, and the gunfight at the ’06 corral will be upon us.

Not to worry though. The Democrats remain comatose and on life support. If the toothless opposition cannot make gains in the mid-term elections next year, in this political climate, then perhaps it will be time to remove the feeding tube and pull the plug.