October 25, 2005
Evidence Has Turned Against the Miers Nomination
By Jack
Kelly
Some in the news media, citing anonymous sources, say Vice President
Dick Cheney recommended against nominating Harriet Miers for the
Supreme Court. If
true, this should dispel the notion, prevalent on the fever swamp
Left, that Mr. Cheney pulls the president's strings. But in this
instance, it would have been better if the moonbats had been right.
If you're in a hole, stop digging. That's good advice, but it
tends to be followed only by those who realize they're in a hole.
President Bush is
in a pit, dug in large part by his "friends."
Like most
conservatives, I was disappointed when Mr. Bush chose a person
unknown to all but the handful who have worked with her. But I
was appalled more by the childish and churlish reaction of much
of the conservative intelligentsia. The president, by virtue of
his stellar judicial choices in the past, had earned the benefit
of the doubt. And Ms. Miers deserved the opportunity to be heard
before harsh judgments were made about her.
But it is
one thing to give the president the benefit of the doubt in the
absence of evidence, another to continue giving him that benefit
in the face of evidence.
If Ms. Miers
were as smart and as conservative as Mr. Bush said she was, criticism
should have abated as we learned more about her. It hasn't worked
out that way.
Her private
meetings with senators have gone poorly. "No one is walking
out of these meetings thinking they've just met with a star,"
a staffer who attended one told the Washington Times.
Her meeting
with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter ended in
a public dispute over whether she had or had not endorsed the
"right to privacy" the Court had found in the case of
Griswold v. Connecticut.
This was
compounded when Specter and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the
ranking Democrat on the committee, gave Ms. Miers a public spanking
for turning in her written questionnaire late, with incomplete
responses.
Opponents
have been posting on the Web examples of vapid writing by Ms.
Miers. They have been scouring her work for passages that make
her look bad. But there has, alas, been no shortage of such passages.
The White
House has not countered with examples of clear, concise written
statements by Ms. Miers. This could be because the White House
staff is incompetent, a conclusion the bungled campaign for Ms.
Miers to date makes plausible. But it could also be that no examples
of clear, concise written statements by Ms. Miers exist.
If Ms. Miers
were as the president described her, there was much to be said
for a "stealth" nominee. But all hopes of having her
on the Court by Thanksgiving have been blown up by the controversy
on abortion, the one issue their interest groups demand Democrats
fight to the death.
Abortion
is the worst of all judicial issues for conservatives to pick
a fight on. On takings, on racial quotas, on homosexual marriage,
on the pledge of allegiance, the vast majority of Americans side
with us. But even many Republicans oppose overturning Roe
v. Wade.
And recent
revelations about her support for racial set asides indicate Ms.
Miers is to the left of Sandra Day O'Connor on affirmative action,
a matter of as much distress to conservatives as her abortion
views are to liberals.
The vetting
of Ms. Miers was as incomplete as her Judiciary Committee questionnaire.
Some troublesome financial issues relating to her service on the
Texas Lottery Commission were overlooked. I doubt very much that
Harriet Miers is guilty of any impropriety. But as we have seen
in the Tom Delay persecution, Democrats don't require any actual
evidence to make charges.
I had wanted
to wait until the hearings to make up my mind about Ms. Miers.
But now I fear continuing this debacle will produce the worst
of all worlds for conservatives.
It's hard
to find supporters of Harriet Miers beyond the president and the
First Lady. Her only friend on the Judiciary Committee is Texas
Sen. John Cornyn. All the others, Democrat and Republican, will
be asking tough, probing questions, for which there is no evidence
Ms. Miers can answer well.
The president
needs to pull the plug on this nomination. He needs to fill in
this hole before it gets deeper. If he keeps digging, his enemies
will fill it in over his head.
Jack
Kelly is national security columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
and the Blade of Toledo, Ohio.
