Hold the Revolution

Yesterday, people were choosing up sides on Harriet Miers faster than Moses parted the Red Sea.

Today, Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant says he doesn't think the nomination of Harriet Miers to replace Sandra Day O'Connor is such a bad thing:

Brownback and his conservative friends got the back of Bush's hand. Having essentially held their tongues -- and then their noses -- during the hearings on the Roberts nomination, their reward was an even blanker slate for the hole being left on the court by Sandra Day O'Connor.

What bothered conservatives privately about Roberts was the extent to which he went out of his way to respect the court's most important precedents and the modesty with which he said he would approach big issues. They smelled, at best, incrementalism, and they believe that yesterday Bush gave them even less than that.

This is the most important moment yet in the Bush presidency, when his most vocal and activist supporters have felt like they were on the outside looking in. Their disappointment -- and privately, there is a great deal of anger -- should be the cue for the rest of us to join Sam Brownback in his posture, but to do so with a strong, built-in bias in favor of her confirmation in the absence of shocking, disqualifying evidence.

The revolution Oliphant is referring to is not a revolt against Miers as unqualified but the judicial revolution conservatives hoped would happen during a Bush presidency:

And that is what conservatives hate about her, realizing as they do that this is their last time via Bush to have a chance to employ the Supreme Court on behalf of their long-delayed hopes of revolution via the courts.

The Miers nomination is also another occasion on which to observe that this year's compromise, engineered by a bipartisan collection of 14 moderate senators, to end filibusters for the most part against Bush's appellate court nominees appears to be holding pretty firm. The White House was not a party to that compromise, as a Bush White House counsel named Harriet Miers went out of her way to explain, but there was an implicit commitment, and the Bushies are honoring it thus far. The most important element of the deal was consultation with senators of both parties before Bush made his choices for the bench.

The president did some of that before Roberts. And he did some of that before Miers. Moreover, on this latest occasion he appears to have received strong advice from several Democrats -- most notably Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, that the choice of Miers would be viewed as a positive gesture. This will make opposition to her extremely difficult to mobilize on purely political grounds.

There have been 38 judges appointed to the Supreme Court who had no prior experience on the bench, including William Rehnquist, Byron White, and Lewis Powell so opposing Miers on the grounds that she lacks the qualifications ignores precedent. That leaves cronyism which, while stomach-turning, probably won't do her in, either.

Says Oliphant, "May the best side win. Meanwhile, Bush has appointed a sensible, loyal person whose nomination has deeply disturbed conservatives. These days, that's as good as it gets."

The Washington Post coverage of Miers' nomination is here, here and here.

Richard Viguerie, the "funding father of the conservative movement," is furious about Miers' nomination, according to John Aravosis at AMERICAblog:

Conservatives Feel Betrayed
“President Bush Blinks on Supreme Court Nominees”

“Congratulations are due to Ralph Neas, Nan Aron, and Chuck Schumer for going toe-to-toe with President Bush and forcing him to blink,” said conservative activist Richard A. Viguerie. “Liberals have successfully cowed President Bush by scaring him off from nominating a known conservative, strict constructionist to the Court, leaving conservatives fearful of which direction the Court will go.”

“President Bush desperately needed to have an ideological fight with the Left to redefine himself and re-energize his political base, which is in shock and dismay over his big government policies,” Viguerie added.

“With their lack of strong, identifiable records, President Bush’s choices for Supreme Court nominees seem designed more to avoid a fight with the extreme Left than to appeal to his conservative base,” lamented Viguerie.

Many conservatives worry that without verifiable records, President Bush’s Supreme Court nominees will be more like the liberal Justice Souter than the conservative, strict constructionists Scalia and Thomas.

Finally, outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. predicts that 8 cities will see a sharp drop in productivity in the coming days. Many of the baseball playoff games are scheduled in the afternoon, costing millions of dollars in lost productivity due to employees leaving work early, peeking at television sets and trolling the Internet for score updates. I think that given the events of the past 5 weeks, Americans deserve to have some fun.

GO RED SOX! :-)