Miers Madness

St. Blogs still rumbles over the Miers Nomination. The Malkin/Ruffian axis of illin'/chillin' coalitions rolled through the Parish and bloggers jumped on each wagon as though someone shouted "happy hour!" I could spend all night charting the various illin' and chillin' St. Bloggers' reactions to the nom. Instead, I intend to focus on two bloggers' responses as a case study for the Parish as a whole--and as a microcosm of Fools and their movement conservative allies within the Republican Party. To do that, I intend to compare their responses to Peggy Noonan's exsquisite analysis of the President's nomination of Harriet Miers to SCOTUS.

Mark Shea hasn't held anything back. He clearly sees the President's nominatino of Ms. Miers as an a serious mistake in judgement, at best. Consider this response:

Bush has managed to create an almost perfect storm of contempt for his base, coupled with ongoing contempt from people who will always loathe him. This is more than mere bungling. This is active stupidity. Stupidity that may come only once in a generation. Stupidity that works on so many levels. You almost have to admire the sheer elegance of the stupidity. It tempts you to believe in Stupid Design Theory. A magnificent, towering monument to the ability of a single man to do so much wrong with so little effort.

Wait till John Zmirak sees print. If Miers turns out to be Souter in a dress, I think this will go down in history as the moment when the pro-life movement finally sez "Go to hell" to Republicans who have played them like fiddles, kept them at arms length, made empty promises and lied them onto the reservation for 25 years. For my money, I'm done with the GOP unless, by some miracle, this unqualified crony turns out to be some sort of wonderful SCOTUS judge. But I doubt it. This appointment, along with Bush's incompetent cronyism with FEMA, persuades me he is not serious about security *or* human life, the two main planks of his platform. Now he's the President of a dubious and unpopular war, the head of an Administration which has broken two crucial promises, as well as having the distinction of being the first President to deliberately try to find a way to justify torture in the name of these United States. If I see no indication that the GOP is serious about the tremendous insult they have just delivered their base, then I will be voting third party in '08. The hell with 'em. (Emphasis mine.)

Mr. Shea passionately believes that Ms. Miers lacks the qualification to properly interprete the constitutionality of laws in cases before the High Court. Even if she "votes the right way" on crucial issues, such as overturning Roe v. Wade, she's still the wrong choice. Why? She lacks the legal expertese to frame her objections to abortion inherent in Roe into a sustainable and appropriate jurisprudence. In other words, she's a conservative activist Justice, at best. If she's even that; no one knows who she is or what she'll do. Absent a paper trail, the only defense of her nomination remains the President's persuasive testimony: "Trust me." Mr. Shea has an answer for the President: Not good enough.

Consider how his response compares to Ms. Noonan's:

The headline lately is that conservatives are stiffing the president. They're in uproar over Ms. Miers, in rebellion over spending, critical over cronyism. But the real story continues to be that the president feels so free to stiff conservatives. The White House is not full of stupid people. They knew conservatives would be disappointed that the president chose his lawyer for the high court. They knew conservatives would eventually awaken over spending. They knew someone would tag them on putting friends in high places. They knew conservatives would not like the big-government impulses revealed in the response to Hurricane Katrina. The headline is not that this White House endlessly bows to the right but that it is not at all afraid of the right. Why? This strikes me as the most interesting question. Here are some maybes. Maybe the president has simply concluded he has no more elections to face and no longer needs his own troops to wage the ground war and contribute money. Maybe he has concluded Maybe with no more elections to face he's indulging a desire to show them who's boss.he has a deep and unwavering strain of support within the party that, come what may, will stick with him no matter what. Maybe he isn't all that conservative a fellow, or at least all that conservative in the old, usual ways, and has been waiting for someone to notice. (Emphasis mine.)

and

Back to Ms. Miers herself, and the merits of her nomination. What would she be like on the bench? I know the answer. So do you. It's: Nobody knows. It's all a mystery. In considering who will fill one of the most consequential power positions in the country we are all reduced to, "I like this, I don't like that."

I like it that she's run a legal practice: that she has real-world experience, a knowledge of the flow of money in America, of how it's made and spent. I don't like it that she's never written an interesting thing about a great issue. I like it that she taught Sunday school. I like it that she's not Ivy League. I don't like it that she's obscure. I like it that she works so hard. But I don't like it if she's a drone. I like it that she's a woman. It doesn't matter much that she's a woman. Etc.

I don't think it's important to show loyalty to the president by backing his decision. This choice will live beyond his presidency. It's important to get a justice who will add to the wisdom of the court, who will make it more likely that America will get a fair hearing before the bench.

Would she? I don't know, you don't know, the president who appointed her doesn't know. Presidents are always being surprised by what losers they put on the bench.

I wonder in fact if Harriet Miers knows what Harriet Miers will be like on the court. I am referring to more than the fact that if confirmed she will be presented with particular cases with particular facts that spring from a particular context and are governed, or not, by particular precedents. And I'm referring to more than the fact that people change, in spite of the president's odd insistence that she won't. People do, for good and ill. Sometimes they just become more so. But few are static.

(Emphasis mine.) Now, maybe it's just me. Maybe it's the hour, the fatigue or the final plunge of my mind into the sweet symphony of insanity, but I sense some common threads between Ms. Noonan and Mr. Shea. Both are underwhelmed by her evident lack of SCOTUS jurisprudence qualification. Both note the stunning political wreckage her nomination has caused to the President's base of movement conservatives. Both do not sound confident that Ms. Miers will advocate an end to the Supreme Court's Judiciarium.

And it's not as if there weren't other women candidates that possessed far more qualifications and had track records of genuine conservative philosophy a la Scalia and Thomas. That's is precisely why so many of the President's base are outraged.

Among the outraged would include Hyphen of Excessive Catholicism. However, unlike Mr. Shea, Hyphen is not prepared to rebuke the Republican party at this juncture, especially since a rebuke delivered at the polls in 2006 and 2008 would usher to power the pro-abort Democrats. In spite of his disappointment in Ms. Miers' nomination, he urges restraint:

Catholics are not called to be loyal Republicans, loyal Democrats, or loyal nonpartisans. We are called to be loyal to the truths of God, regardless of whose camp that leads us to. Whether that means society will label us conservative, or liberal, or moderate, or radical, or anything else, is immaterial. The society that events these categories is ever changing; God and the truth do not change.

In 2004, we found ourselves on the side of Bush and the Republicans (or, more accurately, we found them on our side). Now, thinkers like Mark Shea and William Watkins are claiming that we've been hosed and that we should try another strategy: voting third party (or not voting at all) and see how the GOP likes it.

They are entitled to their prudential judgments, but I must disagree and urge caution. An abandonment of the Republicans in '06 and '08 -- in such a closely divided electorate -- would ensure liberal Democrats' return to power. To Catholics who don't mind such a prospect, I say: You do not realize what you're wishing for.

The Republican Party is our only hope for pro-life/pro-family government. Whatever the arguments be that this hope is dim, it is certainly brighter in the GOP than in third parties or in the Democratic Party that would surely benefit from our defection. Maybe we need to do a better job in the primaries in picking candidates who agree with our Catholic vision of society. But we cannot drop out of the game altogether. However poor a conservative president's nominations are, how much worse would a liberal president's be!

At this point, the solution is to make ourselves more influential within the Republican Party. If Catholics voted increasingly with a common voice -- rather than split in half as we do -- we would surely be a political force to be reckoned with. But we -- and, more importantly, our agenda -- would get nowhere, and indeed would suffer, if we abandon the GOP.

Like I said, this does not make us Republican loyalists. But our fidelity to our mission prohibits us, in my view, from what would admittedly be an emotionally satisfying electoral punishment of the Party at this point in history. (Emphasis mine.)

He also recounts the President's pro-life accomplishments: From opposing population control zealots at the United Nations, to preventing tax dollars from going to fund overseas abortions; from refusing Medicare coverage for RU-486, to banning federal funding for embryo-destructive research; from increasing funding for abstinence education, to signing legislation on partial-birth abortion, unborn victims of violence, and infants born alive during abortions; from opposing the seemingly unstoppable tide of 'same-sex marriage', to promoting marriages among poor single mothers; from promoting a cloning ban to, yes, appointing hundreds of sensible, pro-life judges to federal courtrooms across America, the President and his conservative allies have been fighting the good fight against the culture of death in countless ways that don't usually make the front page. Clearly, Hyphen does not deliver a ringing endorsement of the President's nomination. However, he's not prepared to believe that the nomination signals the President's abandonment of his conservative principles or his pro-life supporters, as Mr. Shea evidently believes. While Ms. Noonan may agree with him on this point, she implies that it's almost beside the point:

the Miers pick was another administration misstep. The president misread the field, the players, their mood and attitude. He called the play, they looked up from the huddle and balked. And debated. And dissed. Momentum was lost. The quarterback looked foolish.

The president would have been politically better served by what Pat Buchanan called a bench-clearing brawl. A fractious and sparring base would have come together arm in arm to fight for something all believe in: the beginning of the end of command-and-control liberalism on the U.S. Supreme Court. Senate Democrats, forced to confront a serious and principled conservative of known stature, would have damaged themselves in the fight. If in the end President Bush lost, he'd lose while advancing a cause that is right and doing serious damage to the other side. Then he could come back to win with the next nominee. And if he won he'd have won, rousing his base and reminding them why they're Republicans.

He didn't do that. Why didn't he? Old standard answer: In time of war he didn't want to pick a fight with Congress that he didn't have to pick. Obvious reply: So in time of war he picks a fight with his base? Also: The Supreme Court isn't the kind of fight you "don't have to pick." History picks it for you. You fight.

In other words, the base doesn't want to hear about stealth pro-life accomplishments. Conservatives want an end to the Judiciarium. The President's nomination could have been his bully pulpit as to why the US needs the Judiciarium to die. Instead, his nomination is another stealth candidate. He sends the unstated message that the Democrats have won the Culture War on SCOTUS, so only guerilla warfare will earn Conservatives victory. But enshrinement of the Judiciarium into the Nation's political culture is not what Conservatives signed on for.

So much for St. Blog's Illin' and Chillin' archtypes. Where does your humble Fool stand?

In listening to Hyphon's call for Catholic conservatives to "chill," I coudn't help but think of George Orwell's Animal Farm. In particular, I recalled the message that the pigs, symbols of Joseph Stalin and his cronies in the Soviet Union, kept delivering the same message to the other animals of Animal Farm whenever they considered another uprising: Do you want Mr. Jones to come back? Fear of the return of Orwell's stand-in for the despotic Czar kept the animals in check.

Does Hyphon's warning of a return of liberal Democrats to power serve the same purpose? Indeed, his argument appears to boil down to that very question.

But I have a question for him: What if the President's nomination does the pro-abort Democrats' job for them? Does the President and his party still deserve the support of Catholics then?

The Culture of Death subsists on institutional support. The horrendous legal reasoning that gave birth to Roe v. Wade continues to provide rulings that shore up this support. If the Supreme Court is to do an about-face from this regrettable Judiciarium-esque behavior, it will require justices that do more than just believe abortion is wrong. It requires brilliant legal minds that can clearly and persuasively argue why Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. It requires Justices that demonstrate a convincing judicial philosophy that is rooted in strict constructionist interpretation of the US Constitution. It requires principled men and women that possess a well-conceived and insightful legal philosophy--before the nomination process!

Many potential candidates for the Supreme Court fit that bill. Harriet Miers did not. Her experience may provide a helpful perspective on how the interpretations of the Court play out in real people's lives. While surely a beneficial and even necessary perspective to bring to the Court, it's not a sufficient one. She will need to convince eight other brilliant legal scholars that her interpretations are appropriate ones for the Court to take. Does she possess the qualifications that will enable her to do this? Not by any reliable indicator made public so far.

Her nomination may indicate the beginning of the end of Judiciarium. More likely, however, is that it continues, as its insidious culture infects Ms. Miers, transforming her into, at best, another O'Connor. I hope I'm wrong. I pray I'm wrong. Perhaps someone on the "chillin'" side of the aisle can explain to me why I'm wrong. Right now, I'm not seeing it.

As if her nomination by itself were not troubling enough, it has set off a firestorm within the Republican Party. If mid-term elections were held this November, many conservatives would stay home, and that would cost the Republicans controll of the Senate, at least. There's every indication that the breach between the President and his base will not be healed until he pulls Ms. Miers nomination. He has not indicated any willingness to even consider doing so. Thus, the void may remain when the mid-terms arrive in November, 2006.

Should that happen, the Republicans might lose control of at least one house of Congress, and possibly both. How likely will the President be to nominate a future Scalia then?

Many of President Bush's policies trouble those committed to Catholic Social Teaching. While his tax cuts put more money back in many people's wages, his irresponsible spending--and unwillingness to restrain Congress' spending--have bloated government and raised the onerous reality of looming deficits. I don't think the country benefits from owing parts of its budget to China! His record on the environment--not promotion of ridiculous regulations, mind you, but his management of sensible measures--is abysmal. He's backed off Faith-based initiatives, and I hear little in the way of job re-training. The Administration's contradictory message on torture and application of Geneva conventions have not filled Fools with confidence. Let's not even bring the Iraq War into the discussion: without considering it, many that take CST seriously have reasons to plug their nose at the Bush White House.

However, he had promised to nominate a Scalia or a Thomas to SCOTUS. The prospect that his nominees could end the Judiciarium, and give the Culture of Life a fighting chance in the country's legal landscape, almost offsets the deficits of his other policies. Many conservatives, already choking back anger over his "drunken sailor" fiscal management and big-government ways, counted on a Scalia/Thomas. Instead, President Bush nominates his personal lawyer.

If Ms. Miers proves to be an O'Connor or a "Souter in a dress," then Catholics and other Fools should re-think their support of the Republicans. They don't necessarily need to vote third party; some may live in districts where pro-life Democrats have a shot at election. If Catholics and other Fools can support pro-life Democrats and propel them to the National stage, perhaps this will convince Republicans to take their now disenchanted base more seriously.

To sum it up, I'm very disappointed in the President's nomination of Ms. Miers. With little public record and no serious scholarship, she appears an unqualified crony that demonstrates the President's arrogance rather than his wisdom. At best, she's a stealth candidate, which sends the message that open conservatives need not apply for SCOTUS, since even 55 Republican Senators won't battle for them. She will probably fail to end the Judiciarium of the Supreme Court. The President blundered a historic opportunity to appoint a Justice that could transform SCOTUS into the institution it used to be before Griswald and Roe. He does not deserve the continued support of Catholics and Fools until he demonstrates that he takes our concerns seriously.

Color me illin'.