What comes next in the firestorm over Harriet Miers nomination to the Supreme Court?
It sounds as if it’ll be the polarization card. Even with the White House being under fire from conservatives who feel they have been betrayed by President George Bush’s decision to name his lawyer who has no judicial experience to the post, the White House yesterday was the setting for a previously tribute to conservative icon William F. Buckley.
As the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank notes, the event, peppered with top conservatives — many of the same ones who have mercilessly blasted GWB’s selection of Miers as one that smacks of croynism and lacks the courage to stand up for conservatives princples — looked looked like “a special presidential edition of “Can This Marriage Be Saved?”
Some conservatives, such as Charles Krauthammer, are now urging that Bush withdraw the nomination.
President Bush insisted today that Miers would be confirmed…but there was a HEDGE in his comments. Read this from the AP:
President Bush predicted Friday that Harriet Miers will be confirmed to the Supreme Court despite grumbling from conservatives that has led a few to call for the president to withdraw her nomination.
Asked he if would rule out ever seeing Miers’ name withdrawn, Bush did not answer directly – substituting instead words of confidence about her confirmation process. “She is going to be on the bench,” he said. “She’ll be confirmed.”
However, Washington Post columnist Terry Neal suggests withdrawing the nomination isn’t what is likely to happen next.
He says the White House is planning to play the P card — move the debate away from Miers’ qualifications, away from the issue of the fact that there are many qualified jurists out there, and away from her lack of decisions or pronouncements on issue of vital concern to conservatives and liberals:
A Republican strategist involved in the front lines of the battle for the Miers nomination, who asked to not be named because he is not authorized to speak publicly, said the White House plans to regain the upper hand by focusing on the nominee’s conversion to evangelical Christianity.“Conservatives love a fight with liberals,” the strategist said. “And one of the things liberals are scared to death of is organized religion. And Harriet Miers is a born-again Christian. When liberal groups and others begin to read about her affirming the Texas sodomy law, contributing to pro-life groups and her religious faith, they’re going to go crazy. It’s already happening now.”
In other words, for the president to regain his political capital, he’ll recast the debate as a traditional one between left and right. But it will work only if he can get his own party to play along.
Indeed: this will be the litmus test for thinking Republicans.
Is the issue to become “we need to get her on the court because she is an Evangelical and see how the liberals don’t like her — so we have to send a message to the liberals and Democrats that it’s time for an Evangelical on the court?”
That would be akin to a Jewish or black Supreme Court member stepping down and a President and his crew under fire for that justice’s replacement’s credentials suggesting that those who oppose the new nominee are bigots because they won’t put a lackluster person from X group on the court.
If this is indeed what is to happen it would be yet one more instance where this administration uses the tactic of dividing Americans, creating anger in one group of Americans towards another then getting the angry group out in droves to thwart the other side — as opposed to deciding an issue on the merits of the issue itself.
This tactic may not work this time because of ire from traditional, Barry-Goldwater-descended conservatives — plus continued backlash over GWB’s claim that Miers is the most qualified person he could find in the country to fill the seat.
Of course, if the heat doesn’t diminish, the unthinkable could become the thinkable: Miers could withdraw her nomination, with a cover statement saying how she wants to spare the admininistration a fight, etc…etc…
And then, the stage would be set for a REAL partisan confrontation over the next, most likely more ideologically forthcoming, nominee…