Don't Get Your Hopes Up

Anti-Bush forces see the Miers nomination as a golden opportunity to split the conservative movement. This hope bubbles up to the surface in this piece ("GOP Evangelicals Fight Intellectuals over Harriet Miers") by Slate's John Dickerson:

"Left-wing bloggers may see the Bush administration and its allies as a uniform mass, but like all successful political teams, it's actually a coalition. At the heart of the coalition is an uncomfortable mix between, on the one hand, right-wing intellectuals, including the neoconservatives whose backing for the Iraq invasion has been so important, and, on the other, the evangelicals who turned out in such numbers to vote for a man who boasted that he was one of them. The Bible-thumbing armies may carry the elections, but they sometimes make the elites in the Republican Party as uncomfortable as they make Maureen Dowd and Michael Moore. In return, the mega-church attendees are mistrustful of the party's often secular, often not-Christian pundits and wizards."

For your daily dose of snobbery, read the whole piece. Apparently, Mr. Dickerson doesn't think Christians ("Bible thumping armies") can be intellectuals. He also postulates a tension between believers and non-believers who share political goals as more significant than it is. Don't get your hopes up, Mr. Dickerson.

Those of us who oppose the Miers pick do so because it is (as Mona Charen terms it) "timid and tepid pick." Charen explains why it is so infuriating:

"[T]he stinging disappointment we feel is the lost opportunity. For 20 years, conservatives have been waiting to see Justice O'Connor's seat taken by an articulate, persuasive, thoughtful and energetic conservative jurist. The talents demanded by the post include, but are not limited to, a philosophical grounding in political theory, thorough familiarity with the Supreme Court's jurisprudence over the past two centuries and particularly over the past several decades, a skilled pen, and a commanding personality. Ideally, the president would have chosen someone with an established reputation for legal brilliance. Why? Because the task of a Supreme Court justice is to persuade. Even in dissent, his or her reasoning may influence the law and our society for decades. This is not the place for an affirmative action hire (though a number of splendid women judges were available), nor for a fine staffer, no matter how solid and reliable she seems to the president."

But what about the faith issue? I suppose I'd prefer a lackluster jurist who is a Christian to a lackluster jurist who is a militant atheist. But what a choice. I feel certain that Ms. Miers believes that abortion is wrong--but is she able to craft a legal opinion on a case involving abortion?

"The No. 1 hook that allows us to take a leap of faith, even those who don't share her faith, is she is an evangelical Christian," conservative activist Manuel Miranda, executive director of the Third Branch Conference, a Washington-based advocacy group, told Bloomberg News. "I respect that, but it isn't quite enough."

I jokingly referred to Ms. Miers as Harriet the Apostate--she seems to have been brought up Catholic and become an evangelical. While I certainly disagree with that course of action, I have bad news for Mr. Dickerson: This is not an issue that is going to split the conservative coalition (you'd know that if you didn't have a caricature view of Christians).

Another reason to believe that the Miers nomination isn't going to split the conservative coalition--the coalition is overwhelmingly unified in opposition to the nomination.

There's one way to stop stealth nominees--overturning Roe. That is why Supreme Court nominees must be people with a short paper trail. To return court appointments to sanity, put the issue of abortion in the hands of voters, where it has always belonged. The pro-abortion forces have a head start--we've had legalized abortion for more than three decades; it is the status quo--and it is unlikely that voters would adopt an anti-abortion stance across the board.


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