It's official: as of 0800 EST, President Bush has chosen Harriet E. Miers, White House Counsel, to replace retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the US Supreme Court. Apparently Miers was suggested by and has support from both sides of the aisle.
As a Bush supporter, I must say that I am thoroughly unimpressed with his latest pick. It seems that he has found his 'consensus nominee' and has found her deep inside the ranks of the ranks of the White House insiders. She has no judicial experience and no significant paper trail - which, on the one hand, deprives the Dems of ammunition for attacks on her record, but on the other hand strips the GOP base of any assurance that this woman won't turn out to be a David Souter. Is it too much to ask, from a President who has gotten so much support from his base in times of intense political pressure, that a solid, proven conservative/textualist jurist be selected?
I know it's too early in the game to be criticizing this woman, and she may very well turn out to be a highly impressive nominee (see Chief Justice Roberts). Judgment must be reserved until we find out more about her. I hope we're all pleasantly surprised, but mostly, I wish we didn't have to hope.
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Of course, it's too much to ask. Dubya hasn't been a conservative since he was elected in 2000. He pretended to be one during the campaign. The only arguably conservative things he's done are his tax cuts. However, I would argue that they weren't conservative since they were not accompanied by corresponding spending cuts.
This is why I'm so depressed about this country. Most people are Republicans before conservatives or Democrats before liberals. In this bizarro world, liberals hate a president that is arguably more liberal than Clinton, while "conservatives" defend reflexively arguably the most liberal president since LBJ.
Miers was also a Democrat until recently. Face it, she's one of Bush's cronies and that's the primary reason she got the job.
Also, what is all this talk about needing a "smooth confirmation"? Why? The Republicans control the Senate. It's likely they could could get enough votes for cloture to bust a filibuster on any nominee or they could use the nuclear option. You cannot spin this any other way but as a betrayal to every conservative that begrudgingly voted for Bush because of the Court.
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