It’s already been noted in the combox below, but I thought it deserved its own post:
HARRIET MIERS WITHDRAWS.
Follow-up memo to Jeb: This does not mean that you don’t still need to pick up the phone and call your brother. He needs to understand, in no uncertain terms, that his next nomination has to be in the Scalia-Thomas mold.
Even another Roberts — as vast an improvement as that would be over another Miers — isn’t remotely going to cut it at this point.
More to follow…
GET THE STORY.
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
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Hurray!!! And, a round of applause for Harriet Meirs doing the right thing! I’m sure she will rise in the esteem of many today.
Prayer DOES work!
Thanks for linking to the WAPO Miers piece in your last post on this.
Reading it pushed me firmly into the “thumbs down” camp regarding Miers. Thank God she did not make it to the SC.
Everybody keep those rosary beads hummin’!
OK, dub, now GET IT RIGHT THIS TIME!
Can we all say “Janice Rodgers Brown”???? Pretty please? Wouldn’t it be so much fun to watch the Democrats try to rip apart the daughter of a sharecropper???? Put KKK Byrd in charge of questioning her regarding her lack of understanding of civil rights!
Everybody keep those rosary beads hummin’!
Agreed!
One note: It was SDG who put up this blog post. Being on the Left Coast, I was too time-zonally challenged to be up and about when word came out this morning.
Yes, I noticed that this was Steve’s post after my first comment – Thanks, Steve!
I was so excited, I glossed right over the by-line and jumped into the post itself, and I should know better!
The more I think about Miers’ withdrawal, the more I think this could be a HUGELY pivotal moment for conservative politics in the U.S..
There may have been a shift in momentum, after having been in the doldrums for a while. Miers has stirred up the sleeping right-wing base, and that could turn out to be just what was needed.
You could read the whole episode as an indication of the continued marginalization of the fringe left. The big debates are now happening within the Republican party, with the left looking on and whining.
Hardly surprising that you didn’t notice, Tim — I’ve been the Phantom Guest Blogger around here for so long, you probably forgot my name was still in the left margin! But this was too hot not to comment on…
Is there any possibility that this was Bush’s plan from the beginning? That ‘Trust me’ should be heeded and now he’s going to pull out all the stops? That he and Miers were in this together (them being good friends) and that he just wanted to rally the troops before a tough nomination process? It seems to me that he is smarter and more in control than some people give him credit for.
I’m not sure how much I believe this possibility (I hope I’m not that naive), but it could be a possibility, couldn’t it?
I don’t know about all this Jeb stuff. Do we really know that Jeb even wants to run for President? The tragedy is that I think he is by far the best of the three Bushes, but I think America is plenty tired of Bushes by now. I only hope they’re just as tired of Clinton’s.
I don’t know about all this Jeb stuff. Do we really know that Jeb even wants to run for President? The tragedy is that I think he is by far the best of the three Bushes, but I think America is plenty tired of Bushes by now. I only hope they’re just as tired of Clinton’s.
I expected Jimmy to let loose with a big cowboy “YEEHAW”
It’s funny the Dems are wailing about how the Radical Right Wing of the Republican Party ran Miers out of town.
Truth is, Dems were not crazy about her, either, and I found myself in the surreal position of being in agreement with Chuck Schumer.
My guess is that many Dems were secretly looking forward to shredding Miers in the hearings, and she would have been emminently shreddable.
“There may have been a shift in momentum, after having been in the doldrums”
The Conservatives’ problem is sitting in the White House and he’s the cause of their “doldrums.”
Bush has supported leftist and moderate Republicans over Conservatives Republicans every time. With his backing Giuliani and Schwarzenegger (both Pro Abortion and possibly Pro Gay-Marriage Catholics) have advanced in national standing in the party and in the media. His programs are pathetic. If he was a Democrat the media would think he was the greatest President in modern times because he doesn’t have the moral problems of Clinton.
His two court choices didn’t disappoint me, I expect them and I also expect them to like another Souter.
While Jeb is a Catholic, I don’t know if he’s a “good” Catholic. While i know he’s not in the Kerry mold, I don’t know enough on his positions. But based on family history I won’t trust him either.
True, if GW were a democrat we would hear not a peep about the Iraq war. It would be painted in the press as a “police action” in a far away land.
And yeah, aside from the Terror War, Bush has been a disappointment, so we agree.
The momentum I’m talking about, though, is with the people who elected Bush, not with Bush himself. He needs to remember that presidents do not elect themselves.
God rises in the divine council, gives judgment in the midst of the gods.
“How long will you judge unjustly and favor the cause of the wicked? Selah
Defend the lowly and fatherless; render justice to the afflicted and needy.
Rescue the lowly and poor; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
The gods neither know nor understand, wandering about in darkness, and all the world’s foundations shake.
I declare: “Gods though you be, offspring of the Most High all of you,
Yet like any mortal you shall die; like any prince you shall fall.”
Arise, O God, judge the earth, for yours are all the nations.
God rises in the divine council, gives judgment in the midst of the gods.
“How long will you judge unjustly and favor the cause of the wicked? Selah
Defend the lowly and fatherless; render justice to the afflicted and needy.
Rescue the lowly and poor; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
The gods neither know nor understand, wandering about in darkness, and all the world’s foundations shake.
I declare: “Gods though you be, offspring of the Most High all of you,
Yet like any mortal you shall die; like any prince you shall fall.”
Arise, O God, judge the earth, for yours are all the nations.
True, if GW were a democrat we would hear not a peep about the Iraq war. It would be painted in the press as a “police action” in a far away land.
No, “peacekeeping”.
Time to rain on the parade….
I suspect that the reason why Bush nominated Miers in the first place was because she was the best nominee he thought he could get through the Senate. This political calculus likely hasn’t changed in the 3+ weeks since the nomination.
The issue, which is the same one that has distorted our national political debate for the last 30 years or so, is abortion. Having imposed abortion-on-demand by judicial fiat, the pro-aborters know that the only way it can be eliminated is also through judicial fiat. Abortion is the great commandment of the Democrat Party, and its sympathizers are in the Republican Party as well. They’ll fight to the death to keep you from prying those scapels, suction machines, and vials of saline solution out of abortionists’ hands. The Supreme Court is the battlefield, and they’re making their stand there.
Of course, there’s a majority of Republicans in the Senate. Unfortunately, that’s irrelevant. The important thing is the number of pro-life Senators and, sadly, they’re in the minority. That’s why, among all those great candidates whose names are being bantered about by conservative pundits, most if not all of them if nominated would be dead on arrival in the Senate. Either they would be defeated outright in a vote, or they would be subjected to endless filibusters and never brought to a vote. Any nominee who has expressed at some point that abortion is wrong or even that something might be wrong with the Roe v. Wade decision will be targeted for defeat, and right now the pro-aborters have the numbers on their side.
That’s why I think all this ire against President Bush is misplaced. It’s one thing to say that we should have nominees in the mold of Scalia or Thomas. It’s another thing to note that, in today’s political climate, Thomas probably wouldn’t have made it through the Senate (and I’m not so sure about Scalia, either). I’m blaming the RINOs, who give the appearance of a pro-life majority in the Senate when there really isn’t one. The best outcome I can see right now is Bush managing to get a solid pro-life voice filibustered in the Senate and then recess-appointing him or her to the Supreme Court – but that only solves the problem until the beginning of 2007. A permanent solution will only come about when we have an actual pro-life majority in the Senate (which, by extension, would come about when we have an actual pro-life majority in this country).
Jeff asks a question that I’ve been asking myself (and I’m sure that many other conservatives have been toying with) since Miers (Meirs?) withdrew her nomination. Namely: Is there any possibility that this was Bush’s plan from the beginning? . . . That he and Miers were in this together . . . and that he just wanted to rally the troops before a tough nomination process?
Was Miers nothing more than a chum-bucket, intended to get the sharks to show their teeth?
If so, the plan worked, and that forces one to seriously consider one of the Democrats’ favorite presumptions: that Bush is a mastermind genius, pulling strings from behind the scenes while we don’t even know it.
On the other hand, Bush may just be eternally lucky (another of the Democrats’ favorite presumptions), and what seemed like Bush’s most devastating mistake somehow magically transformed itself into Bush’s greatest opportunity to cement a glorious conservative legacy.
I just can’t figure this guy out.
One should remember, however, that in regards to picking judges-for-life that the whole thing is a crap-shoot anyway. Clarence Thomas, who is now Our Hero, was very sketchy on where he stood on Roe v. Wade when he was being confirmed. Even his biographer Ken Foskett asserts that Thomas himself did not know where he stood on the courts and abortion until he actually sat on the bench.
As to who should step up after Miers, My Humble Opinion remains the same: Judge Ian M. O’Flaherty is the only Irishman I know of with the Judicial Temperment to qualify him to sit on the bench of the Highest Court in the Land.
You’all did not like Mirers because she was a non-catholic.
“True, if GW were a democrat we would hear not a peep about the Iraq war. It would be painted in the press as a ‘police action’ in a far away land.”
Well, a few of us objected to the war against Yugoslavia (now Serbia and Montenegro) in 1999.
“You’all did not like Mirers because she was a non-catholic.”
Gee Jimmy, I was beginning to think that all the folks who read your blog were intelligent. Its funny how people who say stupid things often don’t sign their name.
BTW, the contraction is “Ya’ll”, and her name is spelled “Miers”.
Why do people call W* a conservative? Conservatives don’t plunge their country into wars for no good reason. Conservatives don’t run up enormous deficits to fund tax cuts for people who can well afford to pay their taxes. I voted for that public disgrace the first time but at least I didn’t make that mistake the second time he slithered onto the ballot.
* W = worthless?
Patrick-
let me wearily point out that:
It is the tax cuts that have helped sustain what economic growth we have had in the last 5 years. What has inflated the deficit has been pork-barrel spending, and I don’t see anyone (Republican or Democrat) doing much about it. W has disappointed me in this regard, but he at least GOT THE TAX CUTS RIGHT. When people pay higher taxes, they also have less money with which to buy art, which affects me directly.
We went into Iraq to squash a dangerous rougue regime that almost EVERYONE (again, Republicans AND Democrats) assumed had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out that we squashed a dangerous rougue regime that had hardly any weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has had free elections and has a new constitution.
It also turns out that the institution that we had been counting on to help contain Saddam (the U.N.), had been playing footsy with him while allowing many thousands of his people to starve to death under trade sanctions. France and Germany were in it up to their armpits.
So, you’re right. Conservatives don’t get us into wars for no reason, and neither did GW.
Should one attend mass if they have a serious case of Bush Derangement Syndrome?
Har-har.
People with Bush derangement syndrome, that is the poor misfortunates that think W represents anything close to Christian values need the help and grace they may get at mass, and our prayers for their speedy return to reality.
Bush Derangement Syndrome = the poor misfortunates suffering from the delusion that W. represents anything close to Christian values. They deserve our prayers and should go to Mass. With god’s help they may return to reality.