Point/CounterpointDebate newsworthy and other 'hot-button' topics here. If it can be debated, this is the forum for it. Can't be thin skinned - people will disagree with you. No flaming or personal attacks.
GOP evangelicals fight intellectuals over Harriet Miers. By John Dickerson Posted Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2005, at 4:49 PM PT
The debate within the Republican Party over Harriet Miers has quickly devolved into a simple question: Is the nominee qualified because of her religious faith, or unqualified by her lack of intellectual heft? On the one side, James Dobson, Miers' fellow parishioners at Valley View Christian Church, and President Bush speak for her heart. On the other, George Will and William Kristol and others who swooned for John Roberts decry her unimpressive legal mind.
In this battle, the White House has clearly sided with the churchgoing masses against the Republican Party's own whiny Beltway intellectuals. The Bushies have always mistrusted their own bow-tied secularists, but the rift has never before been so public. "This is classic elitism," says a senior administration official of the GOP opposition to the Miers nomination. "We often blame the left for it, but we have it in our own ranks. Just because she wasn't on a shortlist of conservatives who prepared their whole life for this moment doesn't make her any less conservative … and just because she hasn't penned op-eds for the Wall Street Journal doesn't mean she hasn't formed a judicial philosophy."
Left-wing bloggers may see the Bush administration and its allies as a uniform mass, but like all successful political teams, it's actually a coalition. At the heart of the coalition is an uncomfortable mix between, on the one hand, right-wing intellectuals, including the neoconservatives whose backing for the Iraq invasion has been so important, and, on the other, the evangelicals who turned out in such numbers to vote for a man who boasted that he was one of them. The Bible-thumbing armies may carry the elections, but they sometimes make the elites in the Republican Party as uncomfortable as they make Maureen Dowd and Michael Moore. In return, the mega-church attendees are mistrustful of the party's often secular, often not-Christian pundits and wizards.
For the Ivy League conservatives who edit magazines and read the New York Times, Miers' lack of judicial prowess makes her incapable of fending off the inevitable leftward pull of all of that marble. Bush evangelicals, on the other hand, believe that her faith will be a more powerful guard against the forces of secularism than any school-book learning. "If she is really centered on Christ, then that's even more important than not caring what Ivy League law schools think about her," says Marvin Olasky, editor of the Christian conservative World magazine. "It means she has a moral compass not tuned to Washington glory." One group wants a member of the judicial monastery, the other wants a woman who could live in one. Bush pledged to appoint a Scalia, say those that weigh her intellectual heft, and she's no Scalia. But those who find Scalia's belief in God more important than his belief in original intent don't see the difference.
We've seen a lot of Bush's neocon side during the war years, as he appropriated arguments from Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Kristol for democratizing the Middle East to provide ballast for his Iraq invasion. But the Miers pick is more reminiscent of the candidate who in 1999 was asked who his favorite philosopher was. "Christ," Bush famously replied, "because he changed my heart. ... When you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as the Savior, it changes your heart and changes your life."
The elites howled at the time. The evangelicals smiled. They understood. The president was trying to tap into that understanding yesterday in the Rose Garden, when he said he knows Miers' heart. The case Bush is making is that in fact, she is the anti-Souter. Before the confirmation hunt, George H.W. Bush wouldn't have known Souter had he been riding on the president's shoulders. But Bush knows Miers.
It's usually time to duck with Bush when he starts playing clairvoyant cardiologist. He said he knew Putin's heart, too, before Putin turned out to be more like Stalin than Jefferson. But he knows Miers not just because they've worked together for 10 years, but because she's walked the same walk. Bush became a committed evangelical Christian at around age 40. She was 34. In that faith, knowing her heart is code for: She's one of us. James Dobson didn't announce his support for Miers so quickly because he heard she was a whiz in the corporate boardroom.
Beyond the religious ties, there's nothing that will make Bush fight harder for his nominee than an attack by the intellectuals—even if they are from his own party. Those who put others down as second-rate minds with weak credentials get relegated to that class of snobs he first learned to hate at Yale, when he walked through their Vietnam protests in his leather bomber jacket. Those who lack skill in what Will called "constitutional reasoning" are already pressing the president's anti-intellectual buttons. Bush loves the idea, say aides, that Miers strikes a blow for real-world simplicity.
Wednesday morning, administration envoys Ed Gillespie, the former head of the RNC, and Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society appeared before anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist's weekly off-the-record gathering of conservative leaders to discuss the Miers nomination. According to my sources, there was yelling. Sparks flew. Miers was not qualified; her pick was a capitulation to the left; Bush is not a true conservative. The White House listens to these outraged voices but considers them more a nuisance than genuine problem. Norquist would not talk about the meeting but did describe the sweaty feeling among disenchanted conservatives. "This is a hard time for the right," he says. "There's the frustration that comes from impotence, because there's nothing they can do. She's going to get confirmed. And they don't know what she'll do when she is. If you're the president, all you can say is 'trust me,' but 'trust me' me is borderline insulting."
The administration says that those with the loudest voices don't have a vote in the Senate, and they're right. That the conservative Eagle Forum is planning to shift and openly oppose Miers isn't a fatal blow, but it may make it easier for conservative lawmakers to defect. Today Sen. Lott crossed his arms and acted doubtful. Still, Miers is likely to be confirmed. But by taking one side so clearly in the internal debate in his party, Bush is making a bet that he can heal the fissure after a short-term win, and that the current fracas among Republicans will dissolve back into one between Republicans versus Democrats.
I'm so happy with this selection. I'm somewhat baffled by it but I am very pleased that he did not choose some weirdo kook like Scalia for this opening.
If you are a Democrat you remain guarded and thankful and hope she gets some more support from the mainstream Republicans.
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I think Washington is filled with politicians. Is it just possible some wheeling and dealing to get John Roberts confirmed, has brought us Harriet Miers?
The extreme left and the extreme right are not happy with this. Hopefully, this means that she will be a good, unbiased justice, without an agenda, who will do a good job for the country.
Here is something I found about her:
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Analysis: The Harriet Miers Nomination
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By Martin Frost
The nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Bush did not come as a complete surprise. I wrote in my Sept. 19 FOX column that Miers was a dark-horse candidate if the president decided to nominate a woman.
I believe this was the first time her name had appeared in print as a serious prospect.
Miers was a logical pick for President Bush for a variety of reasons: She was a pioneering female attorney in Texas, as she was hired by a major Dallas firm in the early 1970s when few Southern law firms were hiring women. She rose to be co-managing partner of this very large firm, served as the first woman president of the Texas Bar Association and loyally served President Bush in a variety of key positions during his first five years in office.
I first met Miers 35 years ago when she and I were both clerking for federal district judges in Dallas. I clerked for a Democratic judge, Sarah T. Hughes, and Miers clerked for a Republican judge, Joe Estes. Our paths have crossed on numerous occasions since then.
My first impressions of Miers as a 25-year-old attorney fresh out of SMU law school are very consistent with what the public sees today. First, she is a Republican — something that was not common in Texas in 1970. Second, she is very bright, hard-working and pleasant. There are none of the hard edges you sometimes find in women who have had to claw their way to the top of their profession.
Additionally, she is capable of understanding any issue presented to her as a justice and will put in long hours to carefully weigh the options. In this regard, she is very similar to the new Chief Justice John Roberts.
Miers served as cabinet secretary for the first four years of the Bush presidency, which meant that she was the last person to see every piece of paper that went to the president for his personal review. Most recently, she served as counsel to the president and one of her main duties was vetting potential nominees prior to the selection of Chief Justice Roberts. The process she orchestrated produced a quality nominee who was confirmed by a significant vote.
Critics will be concerned about the absence of a paper trial since she never served as a judge on any level and has a limited public record. This will concern people on both the left and the right but they will have ample opportunity to ask her detailed questions during the confirmation process.
Some in the legal profession will raise questions about her level of experience — she has never taught law school or served as a federal judge; however, some of the most outstanding justices on the court came up through the political route (as opposed to the judicial or scholarly route.) Chief Justice Earl Warren was governor of California before he was named to the court by President Eisenhower, and Hugo Black was a senator from Alabama before being nominated by President Roosevelt.
Miers' nomination will present an interesting quandary for activist women around the country. As I mentioned earlier, she was a legal pioneer in a very tough neighborhood. Southern law firms did not readily hire women in the early 1970s; nor did they advance women quickly to partnership, nor did they put them in a leadership position for the entire firm. She made all of this on merit. She may not have publicly advanced causes espoused by activist women (indeed, her positions on major issues are not well-known) but she is, in fact, a role model for women professionals in Texas.
There are other interesting aspects to her nomination. There currently are no Southerners on the court (individuals who spent their adult life in the South) and Miers is a somewhat soft-spoken Southern woman. However, no one should mistake her quiet nature for a lack of toughness or resolve. She is a steel magnolia — something hostile senators from both the left and right will find out when they try to embarrass her during the confirmation process.
The public doesn’t know everything about this particular Bush nominee, but I would urge the public, the press and members of the United States Senate to undertake the confirmation with an open mind, and I would urge the senators to do their homework. You can bet Harriet Miers will have done hers.
Martin Frost served in Congress from 1979 to 2005, representing a diverse district in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. He served two terms as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, the third-ranking leadership position for House Democrats, and two terms as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Frost serves as a regular contributor to FOX News Channel, and is currently a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He holds a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a law degree from the Georgetown Law Center.
Point/Counterpoint
10-06-2005, 14:25
Gods vs. Geeks (Harriet Miers for SC judge) 
