Patterico's Pontifications

10/9/2005

Who Was Bush’s Second Choice?

Filed under: Judiciary — Patterico @ 9:23 am



Did Bush nominate Harriet Miers because he has secret knowledge of her conservative bona fides — knowledge that seems to contradict what little we know about her record? Or was he simply looking for a consensus candidate, and judicial conservatism be damned?

There is a hint in this Robert Novak column (via Jonathan Adler):

A footnote: President Bush had advised senators that his probable choice for the Supreme Court was federal Circuit Judge Consuelo Callahan of California. Bush touted Callahan’s diversity as a Hispanic woman, but she is liberal enough to be recommended for the high court by Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer.

Spin that one, Miers supporters. The best you can do is to trash Bob Novak. Because if he’s right, this is devastating evidence of Bush’s lack of regard for the importance of this nomination.

If true, Novak’s story conclusively refutes the idea that Bush was simply going for the most reliable conservative candidate he could find. It means that Bush’s primary goals were: 1) getting a woman on the Court, and 2) choosing someone who would please Democrats. (Judging from Barbara Mikulski’s comments, he sure did that with Miers.)

P.S. Adler says: “Whatever Miers’ approach to constitutional interpretation, there is reason to believe Callahan would have been worse.” Perhaps — but that is not a reason to support Miers. If Bush is forced to withdraw Miers’s name by outraged conservatives — an extremely unlikely possibility — he would be forced to move right, not left.

7 Responses to “Who Was Bush’s Second Choice?”

  1. The story was, after John Roberts was nominated, that Edith Clement or Edith Jones was the supposed second choice. Given the close time frame involved between the nominations, it seems improbable that the stories were true about Judges Clement or Jones; why ought we to give any more credence to the story above?

    Assuming that Miss Miers is confirmed, it’ll be interesting for those of us who are still blogging ten years from now to go back to the stuff we are writing today, and see how much of it holds water about Miss Miers.

    Dana R. Pico (ba0b64)

  2. Like you said, if true.

    A leak like this would have a purpose. It would say to the R Senators: sure you can reject HM, but consider who would replace her.

    I mean, if HM is derailed, it will have to be by R’s, cuz D’s put themselves in too much of a bind by recommending her in the first place.

    Sounds, too, like the concern is more about the vanilla R’s voting no than about rejection by the RINOs. Interesting, as it implies that HM was most especially chosen to be the RINO-compatible candidate. It’s the RINOs who are driving this whole process.

    Confirmation is now wobbly. I say that as one who – tentatively, pending more info – thinks HM could end up being a good Justice. But the politics are swinging against her.

    ras (f9de13)

  3. BTW, and in accord with Dana’s pt, I’ll re-emphasize: I’m not saying the Callahan leak has to have been true, just that it could easily have been deliberate, with all that that implies.

    ras (f9de13)

  4. Since when is anything Novack says expected to be true?

    von (3bf14f)

  5. I’m with Von. Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot of statements about Miers which, if said by anyone who had any credibility of their own, would be pretty damning indeed. David Frum, who thinks it’s really important where judicial candidates stand on stem cell research, throws out every conceivable argument and the kitchen sink. So does George Will, who pooh-poohed the nomination of the guy who eventually became my favorite Justice, Clarence Thomas. Then there’s Ann Coulter, who thinks Miers is every bit as unqualified as John Roberts was, while Arlen “Super-Precedent” Specter is unimpressed with Miers’s knowledge of the Constitution and Robert “It’s All About Me” Novak muses that GWB deliberately made a bad judicial pick just to piss off his own political base for fun, and Keith Olbermann, James Dobson and Harry Reid say … oh, who the fuck cares what Keith Olbermann, James Dobson or Harry Reid says about anything?! The one real constitutional heavy we do hear from, John Yoo (a Berkeley con law prof who George Will would never listen to anyway since he for the guy who was unfit to be a Supreme Court Justice) appears to have based most of his conclusions not on his own firsthand knowledge but on multiple levels of hearsay from people whose constitutional credentials are a tad less impressive than his.

    Can we finally hear something, anything from somebody who actually knows WTF is going on? Good God, I’m almost afraid to pick up tomorrow’s newspaper, for fear that the leading editiorial, be it one for or against Miers, will be a joint effort by Madonna, Tom Cruise, Joseph Grodin, Sean Penn, Rich Marotta and Erwin Chemerinsky.

    Xrlq (428dfd)

  6. President Bush has thoughtlessly opened Pandora’s Box with this nomination. If he has to nominate a replacement for Miers, or if another vacancy gives him another nomination, I think he has almost obligated himself to stick it to true conservatives and signaled his willingness to do so.

    The Dems and RINOs are emboldened from here on out to do any and everything necessary to defeat a known conservative nominee. If indeed the President made this nomination out of any sense of his own vulnerability, he has only made himself (and his party!) much more vulnerable than before the nomination. Can anyone seriously argue anymore that the Reps in the despicable gang of fourteen are going to take a principled stand to defeat a filibuster on a conservative candidate, should one by some miracle be nominated?

    I think the “fight” which so many desired and arguably could have been won despite RINO wavering is no simply longer a possibility, for this or any other nomination. Pres. Bush has probably squandered conservative hopes for both this nomination and any future nomination.

    Levans (7c811d)

  7. […] Patterico’s Pontifications: “Who Was Bush’s Second Choice?” […]

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