Miers Just Wont Go Away

[Canuck]

For the White House, the timing could not be worse. With Mr Bush's Right-wing base rebelling for the first time in his five years in power, he badly needs his consigliere at his side to prevent the mutiny from undermining his last three years. Mr Rove is the vital link between the White House and the "base", overseeing weekly meetings with evangelical leaders to address their concerns.

Mr Bush was unyielding yesterday over the decision that has inflamed conservatives: his choice of the White House counsel, Harriet Miers, as his candidate for a key place in the Supreme Court.

"She is an extraordinary nominee, a very bright woman," he said of his former personal lawyer.

But Right-wing outrage is showing no sign of waning. Miss Miers is a conservative but many on the Right feel betrayed. They were hoping that Mr Bush would take advantage of the vacancy to appoint a judge with a proven ideological streak who could entrench a conservative domination of the nation's moral landscape for years to come.

 

[Canuck]

The Right: With Friends Like These

By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Oct. 17, 2005 issue - After Sandra Day O'Connor resigned from the Supreme Court in July, the White House reached out to an informal network of conservative lawyers and academics to help build support for the next nominee. The group of about three dozen worked smoothly during the confirmation battle over John Roberts, plotting strategy in conference calls with administration officials and penning newspaper op-eds. But last week members of the "brain trust," as one called it, rebelled. In a string of sometimes testy e-mail exchanges among themselves, the lawyers agonized over the selection of White House counsel Harriet Miers. They also debated vigorously whether they should go public with their dismay, or simply say nothing.


"We are keeping quiet. And hiding from the media," wrote Abigail Thernstrom, the Bush-designated vice chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and a prominent critic of affirmative-action policies, in an e-mail copied to other members of the network. "As for undermining trust in the president, I am afraid he has accomplished that all on his own—without any help from us." (Asked for comment last week, Thernstrom said she was upset that a "private e-mail exchange ends up in the news media.")

The e-mails, copies of which were obtained by NEWSWEEK from one of the participants, illustrate the depth of conservative angst over the Miers selection. Many on the e-mail trail fretted about their own "credibility" if they publicly took up the cause for Miers, who seemed to lack the credentials they value. "It no longer matters whether she's the second coming of John Marshall; the cronyism charge has stuck, bec. [sic] it's so obviously true," wrote Michael Greve, a legal scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Greve wondered what was next. Would Bush, he asked, replace Fed chair Alan Greenspan with "a young lady in the basement of the West Wing who did a terrific job on the TX Railroad Commission [and was the] first Armenian bond trader in Dallas ..."

Others stuck by the president. George Terwilliger, a former top Justice Department official who worked for the GOP on the 2000 Florida election battle, said that "unless it does violence to one's conscience, I would respectfully suggest that we suck it up and show our support" for the administration.

Even so, some of the most biting criticism came from prominent Washington hands who have zealously defended Bush in the past—but who have been conspicuously silent about Miers. One, Michael A. Carvin, the lawyer who argued the president's case in Bush v. Gore before the Florida Supreme Court, was riled by a newspaper article about Miers. The story reported that Miers had once been quoted saying she wouldn't belong to the Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal group, because she viewed it as "'activist' and 'partisan'." In an e-mail to the group, Carvin—who did not respond to repeated calls for comment—wrote, "This is becoming more embarrassing as every day passes


omg they are at each others throats this early in the campaign:3oops:

 

[teacher]

What a sad sad life you must have spending all your time and energy trying to find ways to dog America and coming up so woefully short. But on the bright side I get to point it out. Yea.:monkey