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.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-10_25_05_JKE.html