Bush has picked an intensely loyal "pit bull" with "no experience" to serve on the Supreme Court. As Brownie taught us, the most important qualifications for high office in this administration are no experience and intense loyalty.
As Sandra Day O'Connor's replacement, Bush has nominated White House Counsel Harriet Miers, a loyal Bush follower who hails from Texas. In Bushspeak: "I've known Harriet for more than a decade. I know her heart. I know her character."
And Brownie was "doing a heck of a job."
Does this mean, a Justice Pit Bull would receive instructive phone calls in the middle of the night? Or perhaps Miers knows her benefactor so well that no instructions are necessary.
Obviously, a close relationship with a president is not only not a qualification for serving on the High Court, it is a disqualification.
For God's sake, why didn't he just pick Laura?
But looking on the bright side, Justice Pit Bull is preferable to Justice Hurricane Karen, who is also an intensely loyal woman with no experience.
Miers came with Bush to the White House in 2001 as staff secretary, the person who screens all the documents that cross the president's desk. She was promoted to deputy chief of staff before Bush named her counsel after his reelection in November
If confirmed, she would be a rare appointee with no experience as a judge at any level. Among the non-judges appointed in modern history are the late William H. Rehnquist, who was a top justice department official in the Nixon administration, and Abe Fortas, an influential Washington attorney and close adviser to Lyndon B. Johnson, who nominated Fortas to the court in 1965.
When he was governor of Texas, Bush once called her "a pit bull in size 6 shoes" for her cool but dogged determination.
With no experience, or as they are saying on CNN, with a "blank slate," I guess we can expect a repeat of the Roberts' confirmation hearings.
The spineless Dems have already established that they can be counted on to vote for "blank slates" or mystery nominees. Thanks for that Dems. Once the Dems set that dangerous precedent, Bush and his Brain would have been utter fools not to pick another "blank slate."
National Review’s David Frum commented on Miers last week:
In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met. . . This is no time for the president to indulge his loyalty to his friends.[Hat tip to Think Progress ]
Over at Redstate.org some are fretting because Miers gave money to Gore in 1988, others express the same concerns that I have:
She gave to Al Gore??? Good lord Mr President. Have you lost control of your faculties? Al freakin Gore? Wake me up from my nightmare. It's still early in the morning out here on the west coast.
Now is NOT the time to nominate a blank slate! A Harriet Miers is what you pull when you are in the minority in the Senate. There are so many highly qualified conservatives out there... sheesh. This woman is not even in the top hundred of qualified conservative candidates.
In her statement, Miers said that, "she had a duty to 'ensure the courts meet their obligation to strictly apply' the constitution and to adhere to 'the founders' vision of the court.'" As we all know, Bush and his rightwing cabal claim that the "founders' vision" is the rightwing vision.
Again, inexperience is not the biggest problem here. A "blank slate" and a close personal relationship with Bush are huge problems. When an intensely loyal follower of Bush, someone from his "inner circle", hears the following words from the Commander-in-Chief, she has received her orders and will follow her ultra rightwing hero's ideology:
Harriet Miers will strictly interpret our Constitution and laws. She will not legislate from the bench.
Harriet, thank you for agreeing to serve.
Newsflash for you Bushie, they all legislate from the bench.
Yeah, Harriet, thanks for agreeing to serve. And can we have a copy of that picture of you and your hero kissing?
UPDATE: Air America has this:
JUST DELETED FROM DAVID FRUM'S BLOG
David Frum, former White House speechwriter, has come down hard against Miers. From his blog at the National Review:
Harriet Miers is a taut, nervous, anxious personality. It is impossible to me to imagine that she can endure the anger and abuse - or resist the blandishments - that transformed, say, Anthony Kennedy into the judge he is today.
Nor is it safe for the president's conservative supporters to defer to the president's judgment and say, "Well, he must know best." The record shows I fear that the president's judgment has always been at its worst on personnel matters.
This is what he deleted:
She rose to her present position by her absolute devotion to George Bush. I mentioned last week that she told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met. To flatter on such a scale a person must either be an unscrupulous dissembler, which Miers most certainly is not, or a natural follower. And natural followers do not belong on the Supreme Court of the United States.
When conservatives and liberals agree, you know something stinks.
[Photo found at the New York Times.]
Harriet Miers Supreme Court Bush Reproductive Rights Politics Roe Bush crony Miers Culture of Corruption Spineless Democrats
