Jeb, Call Your Brother NOW!

It’s time for an intervention in the Bush family.

I know that, as governor of Florida, you are very concerned about the troubles your state is in as a result of Hurricane Wilma. You have a lot of troubles on your plate right now, and our prayers are with you and the Floridians who are suffering from this natural disaster.

But there is another matter that you and other family members must attend to. The Bushes are a political family that seeks to be one of the premier families of American politics, like the Kennedies used to be. But your brother, the president, is rapidly destroying the family’s chances of continuing to play a leading role in American politics.

Your father, it must be admitted, is not fondly remembered. He was elected in order to continue the conservative vision of Ronald Reagan but instead he is judged to be as a mediocre successor who made glaring mistakes that have permanently tarnished his reputation. Chief among these were raising taxes, failing to deal with Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War, and appointing the walking abomination of David Souter to the Supreme Court.

Your brother is in the process of making parallel mistakes.

Though he was smart enough to pass tax cuts that have stimulated the economy, his flagrant and unconstrained government spending is likely to eradicate the good done by lowering taxes.

The current Iraq War is, as you know, a real political albatross. Your brother’s intentions may have been good and going to war may have been the right decision at the time, but the failure to find WMDs and the ongoing insurgency have given your opponents all the resources they need to use this war as a colossal embarrasment to your brother.

Now we come to the Harriet Miers situation.

As you know, it’s a catastrophic mess that was created when your brother went against the advice of his advisors and picked a stealth nominee who also plays into the cronyism charges to which your brother is vulnerable. The problems with Harriet Miers are so numerous that I can’t possibly go into them now, but the important point is that your brother has totally welshed on his promise to appoint justices like Scalia and Thomas.

He has stabbed the conservative movement in the back at a moment that should have been the culmination of thirty years of intense effort to take back the Court from the justices who have been usurping the democratic process in this nation and imposing their own values on the land.

Your father is ill-remembered for his "Read my lips: No new taxes" promise, which the then broke. Your brother is now in the process of similarly destroying his own reputation with conservatives by breaking his promise to appoint justices like Scalia and Thomas.

For further background on the scope of the disaster, please read

THIS ARTICLE BY JUDGE BORK

AND THIS ARTICLE BY THE WASHINGTON POST ON MIERS’ JUDICIAL PHILOSOPHY

AND THIS ARTICLE (FROM YESTERDAY) BY ROD DREHER ON HOW YOUR BROTHER HAS REPEATEDLY BETRAYED THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT AND NOW THE CHICKENS ARE COMING HOME TO ROOST.

I mean, you read these things and it’s simply flabbergasting. The incoherence and inconsistency of Miers’ views cries out for explanation, and the likely explanations are not good ones. One of my blog readers insightfully commented:

When she sent back the pro-life questionnaire, she was running for
political office as a conservative in a conservative city. I think
political exigencies are enough to explain it, especially considering
the paucity of other evidence as to her being pro-life (like church
attendance and paying the minimum to attend a pro-life dinner once).
Choosing between the quesionnaire filled out while running for office
and the speech given while not running for office, I give the speech
more weight, especially since it is at a later date after the election
of Bill Clinton and after the Casey decision. At best, she plays to the
crowd she’s with and that is a very bad thing for a prospective justice to do.

Before reading that article, I thought she was probably O’Connor II
with fewer qualifications. Now I think she’s as likely to turn out to
be Harry Blackmun in a dress, both in terms of mediocrity and in terms
of judicial philosophy.

Blackmun in a dress is very possibly correct! She may actually be worse than Souter!

The longer her nomination remains in place, the worse things are for your brother. His bridges to his base get more burned with every day that goes by. It’s time for a swift and dramatic course correction.

This is not only for purposes of salvaging your brother’s reputation and his ability to accomplish anything in his remaining three years in office, it’s also for purposes of protecting the family’s legacy and political future.

I mean, your father was something that conservatives had to overlook in nominating your brother for the presidency. "Yeah, we know the first Bush was bad–a phony conservative–but this one is better–he’s a real conservative" was the message.

Now it looks like that is not the case and that your brother is a phony conservative, too.

Frankly, I don’t care what his personal views are as long as he delivers where it counts, and where it counts is the Supreme Court.

So let me tell you what will happen if the Miers nomination goes forward and (God forbid) she gets on the Supreme Court and turns out to be anything other than a firm originalist: Conservatives will not trust your family with the chance to run for the presidency again.

The first President Bush was a "fool me once" situation, and the second President Bush is turning into a "fool me twice"situation. There will be no third President Bush.

The message that will be driven home to the conservative base is: "You can’t trust the Bushes. They’re phony conservatives who will lie to get into office and then stab you in the back by breaking their most important campaign promises. They’re Big Government big spenders, they’ll get you into bungled wars in the Middle East, and they’ll put walking disasters on the Supreme Court. You simply can’t trust them. Find someone else."

Now, as a Bush, you presumably have a much more positive image of your family than this, but this is the image of your family that will be confirmed in the minds of the conservative base if things are put right in a hurry.

Your brother being notoriously stubborn, though, means that he may dig in his heels and resist putting things right.

That’s where you (and other family members) come in.

For the sake of your brother, the sake of your family, and the sake of the nation, it is time for an intervention in the Bush family.

Please, Jeb, pick up the phone.