See, I told you so!

Last week, I wrote that it is highly possible that some of the "more qualified" candidates for the Supreme Court may have been asked to take the job, but declined, resulting in Bush settling for Harriet Miers.  Some people said I was on drugs.  But this morning on Rush, I heard that, according to James Dobson, Karl Rove said that other people were asked and said no:

“Well, what Karl told me is that some of those individuals took themselves off that list,” he said, according to a transcript obtained last night. “They would not allow their names to be considered because the process has become so vicious and so vitriolic and so bitter that they didn’t want to subject themselves or the members of their families to it.”

This sounds to me like a combination of my scenarios A and B...

But what do I know?  Dr. Dobson and I must be on drugs.

Comments

[Jeff]

Donald Sensing's also got it:
http://www.donaldsensing.com/index.php/2005/10/12/harriet-miers-an-off-the-bench-sub/

[GunnNutt]

Not drugs, you're just omnicient.

[Gullyborg]

GunnNutt, you win the prize for most intelligent comment. Congratulations!

[Ken]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two conservative Supreme Court candidates withdrew from consideration but that had nothing to do with President George W. Bush's decision to nominate White House lawyer Harriet Miers, the Bush administration said on Wednesday.
...
White House spokesman Scott McClellan confirmed what conservative Christian leader James Dobson told his radio program about an October 1 telephone conversation he had had with Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, in which Rove tried to convince Dobson to support Miers.

McClellan said it was "just a couple" of candidates who had withdrawn from consideration.
-------------------------

So it was true, to a point. Good thinking, Gully. However, I thought your original post implied that Bush asked others first and they declined, so Miers' name came up. Sensing's post says Miers was at the top of the list, but I still find that hard to believe...

[biggovgop]

Believing Rove in anything is maybe one step below being on drugs. His job description includes "smooth liar".

There are thousands of tanned, rested and ready conservative judges willing to take a bullet to get on the SC. And not all are sexist and elitist, the other BS put out by Mehlman and Gillespie, who are in the same category as Rove, though obviously lacking the "smooth" part.

[Gullyborg]

considering that there are only several hundred judges on the courts of appeal, your estimate of thousands is hyperbole.

and while there may be hundreds, how many of them are well enough known by Bush for him to have confidence that they wouldn't drift left like Kennedy?

how many of them have the same level of national recognition as, say, Janice Rogers Brown, meaning how many of them would not set off the same alarm bells we are hearing now with Miers?

How many of them are women or minorities? Face it, as much as we conservatives hate affirmative action, it is a politicaly reality at this time. Another white male nominee would have been opposed by the left, no matter who he was (unless he was so liberal that we'd be in a worse situation than with Miers).

It is time for us to accept some simple facts:

Miers is conservative enough to vote the right way on most key social issues.

Miers may not be the "most qualified" potential justice, but the Constitution doesn't demand the "most qualified" of anything. The President gets to choose justices who will advance the President's policies over time. It has been this way since George Washington named John Jay the first Chief Justice. We have seen it with John Marshall (greatest CJ ever, who dropped out of law school and never won a case as a lawyer). We saw it when Lincoln appointed his long time friend Davis. We saw it when FDR named Hugo Black. Now, we have re-elected Bush, and it is his perogative to name new Justices that HE likes. He is not honor bound to only appoint Harvard Grads who had served on the courts of appeals after serving in the solicitor generals office. He could name a duck if he wanted, and it would be up to the Senate to confirm or not. Harriet Miers is far from a duck.

Miers will not change the balance of the court much. She will join Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas to make 4 conservative votes. Kennedy will sometimes join them. But he won't on hot button social issues (he wrote Planned Parenthood v. Casey, for crying out loud!).

If anything, Miers makes the court more conservative than before, because she is clearly more conservative than O'Connor and will probably be consistently so.

What is absolutely essential for us is to look ahead to 2006 and 2008. The next President will surely replace Stevens if GWB does not. And in the next 10 years or so, we will have to be ready for the retirements of Scalia, Kennedy, and probably also Ginsburg.

We can ABSOLUTELY create a real conservative court with no swing votes, IF we can:

A) make the Senate more conservative, to prevent "gang of 14" action and filibusters, and

B) elect another Republican after Bush, and a conservative one at that (no McCain, no Giuliani).

[biggovgop]

Gully,

You're absolutely correct about the number of judges and my hyperbole. But the hyperbole had a purpose: exposing the BS and lies from the political operatives. I also agree that an affirmative action choice was desirable. I also agree that Miers is far better than a duck, though I expect her to be a lot more liberal than you do. I'd also like to go into the next campaign saying the GOP stands for excellence, though not necessarily a Harvard person.

Where I'm in disagreement is with the premise that the Senate is the problem. Senators are normally a crowd of the old-money set. Those folks are not remotely philosophically conservative. Whether you have 46, 54, or 59 is not the crucial issue, which is what does the president want to spend his capital on. There will always be RINOs; that's just the nature of politics. The country may move left or right, in which case the parties will move, but there will always be DINOs and RINOs. The current president has been willing to fight for certain things, but the SC doesn't appear to be one of them.

Obviously, though, your points are not really in dispute.

[Gullyborg]

I have no faith in our current Senate. 55 seats are meaningless when more than 5 of them are ready and willing to side with the democRats EVERY time something controversial, or something important to GWB, comes up. And with McCain trying hard to win the 2008 presidential race before it starts, it only gets worse. The more McCain thwarts GWB, the more the press loves him.