At this point, no one is seriously predicting that the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court is dead…or even on life support…but let’s just say the patient isn’t in A+ health. To wit:
Members BOTH parties essentially gave her the equivalent of a school “incomplete” with a teacher’s admonishment on her judicial questionnaire — and that’s not a harbinger of smooth sailing. The New York Times:
The Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers suffered another setback on Wednesday when the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee asked her to resubmit parts of her judicial questionnaire, saying various members had found her responses “inadequate,” “insufficient” and “insulting.”
Senators Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the committee chairman, and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat, sent Ms. Miers a letter faulting what they called incomplete responses about her legal career, her work in the White House, her potential conflicts on cases involving the administration and the suspension of her license by the District of Columbia Bar.
Their letter also asked her to provide detailed accounts of private reassurances about her views given by the White House or its allies to some conservative supporters who have been anxious about her positions on abortion and other social issues.
The letter asked Ms. Miers to respond within a week. Mr. Specter said he had scheduled hearings on her confirmation to begin Nov. 7, overruling Democratic objections that they did not have enough information to evaluate her because of her scant record on constitutional issues before joining the White House. Both Mr. Specter and Mr. Leahy said they would not set any deadline for the conclusion of the hearings.
“If the questions are not answered or their answer is incomplete, as they have been, then it’s going to be a long hearing indeed,” Mr. Leahy said.
Veteran senators and aides said they could not recall another occasion when the committee had sent back a nominee’s answers to a questionnaire because they were incomplete.
Now get ready for the SPIN OF THE YEAR:
Former Senator Daniel R. Coats of Indiana, the administration’s appointed guide for Ms. Miers on Capitol Hill, defended her answers i the Senate questionnaire as a work in progress.
“From the very first, Harriet Miers told Senator Specter that she had years of files to go through and that there would likely have to be a follow-up on some of the questions,” Mr. Coats said. “She’s more than willing to diligently provide the information as soon as possible. As you know, it’s mountains of information.”
Mr. Specter, however, has said that Ms. Miers told him last week that she would complete the questionnaire by last Friday.
Oops. Either Mr. Coats or Mr. Specter is misspeaking.
And storm clouds can be seen elsewhere, too. Despite new info stemming from when she ran for Dallas City Council that Ms. Miers is in fact dead set against Roe V Wade, it’s not stemming criticism from some conservatives who insist this isn’t about one ruling but about a broader promise George Bush made to them. William Kristol is not soothed by the recent push to all but come out and say Miers is against Roe v Wade:
It isn’t just about abortion.
To William Kristol, one of the nation’s most influential conservatives, the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court beaks a bedrock campaign promise President Bush made to the Republican right about “the future of American jurisprudence.”
If the Senate confirms the White House counsel and longtime Bush adviser to succeed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Kristol said Wednesday, “Bush would end up not having moved the court to the right at all,” despite having appointed both Miers and newly sworn Chief Justice John Roberts.
Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and a prominent conservative commentator and political analyst, delivered a harsh assessment of Miers, and of her prospects of winning Senate confirmation, during a telephone interview before coming to Seattle for a speaking engagement tonight.
But storm clouds don’t always signal a hurricane…
The solid conservative website Red State.org’s Eric (who often has inside info) offers this tidbit (partial quote here):
The President believes that Miers will satisfy the conservative base. “He hasn’t sold out and all the rhetoric that he is not a conservative is bull[ ],” I’m told. Miers, says he, if she can get on the Court, would side with the right on the parental consent issue. That’s the only major abortion case on the horizon right now except possibly partial birth abortion and, again, she’d more likely than not side with the right.
More importantly, Miers will be a better business conservative than O’Connor, I’m told. She has a business background and enough practical experience to not only persuade academics on the Court, but also to write reasonable, easy to understand opinions.
I’m told that the White House has the votes. “There’ll be some in the party who oppose her, but they’ll never vote against her on the floor,” says he. “It’s a long time till 2008, for them to oppose Bush now.” He says that the senators most likely to oppose her (and he thinks Brownback, Kyl, and Coburn are three of them) will make a lot of noise, but will in the end let her through.
But is the White House assuming too much (and we again remind readers “‘Assume’ makes an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me.'”)?
If you boil down what the White House is expecting its the old saying: “Well, where else do they have to GO on election day?” Will that be an accurate assumption on this one?
UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge has taken issue with Miers on many grounds and in THIS MUST READ POST HERE writes:”No one could seriously doubt the conservative credentials of either Robert Bork or Bruce Bartlett. These days they are singing out of the same hymnbook when it comes to George W Bush and the tune is not pretty.” Read the quotes he gives you — and his own view at the end.
Outlook: The White House is probably correct. It probably has the votes to shove Miers through. We’d be shocked if she votes in favor of anything involving Roe V Wade. But the deeper issues here for conservatives seem to be Bush not willing to allow a conservative to come out of the ideological closet, using tactics of insinuation on them this folks have used on Democrats all these years, and picked someone who never would have been picked in a million years by any other President if Miers had been on their staff — and most likely even if she had.
And the Democrats? Each day they resemble a 7-Eleven employee who has been told that if there’s a robbery, don’t resist but give them what they want because resisting could only make things worse.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.