Thursday, October 06, 2005
Quandries, Republicanism and Miers
It's been an interesting week. The President on Monday announced his nomination of Harriett Miers, currently White House Counsel, for the Supreme Court of the United States. What is interesting about this, is that all of the fireworks about this nomination is occuring among the President's allies in the Republican Party.
The conservative intelligensia seems particularly unhappy about this nomination. So far Charles Krauthammer has called for the President to withdraw the nomination. Krauthammer complains "[t]here are 1,084,504 lawyers in the United States. What distinguishes Harriet Miers from any of them, other than her connection with the president?"
George Will, while not explicitly rejecting the nomination, offers some strong criticism of the Presidents choice. Will asserts "there is no reason to believe that Miers's nomination resulted from the president's careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers's name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists."
Mind you Will's and Krauthammer's criticism is relatively mild compared to the full scale warfare among conservatives on conservative blogs. An examination of the restate.org and national review online blogs find conservative hyperventilation about the President's nomination, mostly in the negative. The concern is almost palpable.
The Democrats have been relatively quiet, expressing some degree of concern about Ms Mier's evangelical background and support (albeit minor) of right to life organizations.
We live in interesting times.
The conservative intelligensia seems particularly unhappy about this nomination. So far Charles Krauthammer has called for the President to withdraw the nomination. Krauthammer complains "[t]here are 1,084,504 lawyers in the United States. What distinguishes Harriet Miers from any of them, other than her connection with the president?"
George Will, while not explicitly rejecting the nomination, offers some strong criticism of the Presidents choice. Will asserts "there is no reason to believe that Miers's nomination resulted from the president's careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers's name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists."
Mind you Will's and Krauthammer's criticism is relatively mild compared to the full scale warfare among conservatives on conservative blogs. An examination of the restate.org and national review online blogs find conservative hyperventilation about the President's nomination, mostly in the negative. The concern is almost palpable.
The Democrats have been relatively quiet, expressing some degree of concern about Ms Mier's evangelical background and support (albeit minor) of right to life organizations.
We live in interesting times.
# posted by Strange Anomaly : 11:51 PM
