Caterwauling In Extremis

God help us, the social conservatives are cheesed over the nomination of Harriet Miers. There are some good roundups of blogosphere opinions here, here, and here.

I have a few points to make, but I can't be bothered with the fuss of putting them in essay format, so I shall enumerate them and you, my devoted Cake Eater Readers, can be relieved that, for once, I tried to be a champion of brevity.

1. I find it interesting that Miers nomination is being seen, mainly, as a betrayal of social conservatives in favor of cronyism, rather than what it actually is: a bone thrown to the moderates and swing voters. This is GDub setting up the party for the 2008 Presidential Elections by giving the moderates a reason to stick around after all the homage he's paid to the social conservative agenda.

And all of this is only dependent upon finding out that Miers is not, indeed, a far-right candidate. Which, I hasten to add, we don't know. One check written to Lloyd Bentsen's campaign does not a NARAL member make.

2. It could, perhaps, be a good thing to have a Supreme Court Justice who's never been a judge before.

Given the fabulous ruling we had with Kelo this summer, do you think that, perhaps, someone other than a legal scholar who's done nothing but clerked, written opinions on this that or the other and has pretty much done everything the way they were supposed to could read the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution and decide that property rights are inviolable? Or do you really need a legal pedigree a mile long to decide such things?

3. So what if she's almost sixty. Who cares? I hesitate to point this out, but conservatives near and far bluntly rejected any criticism that Justice Roberts was too young to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. They claimed he should be judged on his ability to judge issues fairly with respect to the Constitution; that the age and experience card held no value as far as they were concerned.. Why, now that the shoe is on the other foot, is it not about abilities but rather about the tyranny of a life-time appointment and the threat that that lifetime might be too short?

In short, everyone is caterwauling over nothing right now. Just like with John Roberts we know squat about this nominee. But we'll find out more about her when she goes up for confirmation hearings, won't we? Which is how the system is supposed to work. Remember?

Honestly, I can't figure out if the caterwaulers are cheesed that Bush nominated a supposed moderate conservative or if it's because he's not playing the game the way they think he should.

Posted by Kathy at October 3, 2005 02:38 PM | TrackBack