The Miers Firing Squad

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Word is coming out that some on Bush’s list for SCOTUS did not want to go through the nomination process, so they withdrew:

Meanwhile yesterday, a leading Christian conservative said the White House told him that some prospective Supreme Court nominees conservatives would have preferred withdrew their names from President Bush’s “short list” before the nomination — raising the possibility that Miss Miers wasn’t Mr. Bush’s first pick.

James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, said he spoke with Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove on Oct. 1 — two days before the Miers nomination — and was told that “Harriet Miers was at the top of the short list.”

Also on that list were several candidates that many conservatives say they would have preferred, Mr. Dobson said on his radio program that was recorded yesterday and will be broadcast today.

“Well, what Karl told me is that some of those individuals took themselves off that list,” he said, according to a transcript obtained last night. “They would not allow their names to be considered because the process has become so vicious and so vitriolic and so bitter that they didn’t want to subject themselves or the members of their families to it.”

This is just sad. I mean look what is going on right now against Miers, is it any wonder those on the short list decided to take themselves out of the running?

I tell you, the Buchanities and the Michael Moorites are doing so much damage to both parties. I suspect that those on the far right who are screaming and crying are the same one’s who have been against everything Bush has done anyways, they are that far gone.

Many people have also been stating that the White House has been inept in advancing this nominee but I do not see any evidence that the confirmation is in doubt. Bush has made over a hundred nominations over his terms, and EVERY one of them has been solid conservatives….why do conservatives doubt him now?

Below is the partial transcript of the Dobson interview:

Dobson: “Let me go back through the sequence of events and…and explain what happened. The President announced his decision on Monday morning, October 3rd, that Harriet Miers was his selection and the debate was on. And a few hours after that, many conservative Christian leaders were involved in a conference call, wherein some of those men and women were expressing great disillusionment with President Bush’s decision and there was a lot of anger over his failure to select someone with a proven track record in the courts. And I came in a little bit late and I caught just a bit of that angst and then I shared my opinion, that Harriet Miers might well be more in keeping with our views than they might think and that I did believe that she was a far better choice than many of my colleagues were saying and that they obviously believed.”

” . . . Karl Rove had shared with me her judicial philosophy which was consistent with the promises that President Bush had made when he was campaigning. Now he told the voters last year that he would select people to be on the Court who would interpret the law rather than create it and judges who would not make social policy from the bench. Most of all, the President promised to appoint people who would uphold the Constitution and not use their powers to advance their own political agenda. Now, Mr. Rove assured me in that telephone conversation that Harriet Miers fit that description and that the President knew her well enough to say so with complete confidence.”

“Then he suggested that I might want to validate that opinion by talking to people in Texas who knew Miers personally and he gave me the names of some individuals that I could call. And I quickly followed up on that conversation and got glowing reports from a federal judge in Texas, Ed Kinkeade and a Texas Supreme Court justice, Nathan Hecht, who is highly respected and has known Harriet Miers for more than 25 years. And so, we talked to him and we talked to some others who are acquainted with Ms. Miers.”

“So, I shared my findings with my colleagues, not only what I just mentioned, but other calls I made. I talked to Chuck Colson, my great friend, who is a constitutional attorney —

— and talked to him four times. He helped me kind of assimilate the information that we had garnered, but I would not say much about the phone call from Karl Rove, even though I’m very close to many of the people who are on the telephone. Why would I not do that? Because it was a confidential conversation and I’ve had a long-standing policy of not going out and revealing things that are said to me in confidence. That may come from my training as a psychologist, where you hear all sorts of things that you can’t go out and talk about.”

“So, I wouldn’t reveal any of the details about the call, although I did say to these pro-family leaders, which has been widely quoted, that Karl had told me something that I probably shouldn’t know. And you know, it really wasn’t all that tantalizing, but I still couldn’t talk about it. And what I was referring to is the fact that on Saturday, the day before the President made his decision, I knew that Harrier Miers was at the top of the short list of names under consideration. And as you know, that information hadn’t been released yet, and everyone in Washington and many people around the country wanted to know about it and the fact that he had shared with me is not something I wanted to reveal.”

“But we also talked about something else, and I think this is the first time this has been disclosed. Some of the other candidates who had been on that short list, and that many conservatives are now upset about were highly qualified individuals that had been passed over. Well, what Karl told me is that some of those individuals took themselves off that list and they would not allow their names to be considered, because the process has become so vicious and so vitriolic and so bitter, that they didn’t want to subject themselves or the members of their families to it.

So, even today, many conservatives and many of friends of mine, are being interviewed on talk shows and national television programs. And they’re saying, “Why didn’t the President appoint so-and-so? He or she would have been great. They had a wonderful judicial record. They would have been the kind of person we’ve been hoping and working and praying for to be on the Court. Well, it very well may be that those individuals didn’t want to be appointed.”

Check out Big Lizard’s analysis of Laura Bush’s “sexism” statement, it’s a must read.

Also check out The Strata-Sphere,Pardon My English, Atlas Shrugs, Bookworm Room, Cheat Seeking Missiles, Reasoned Audacity, Patterico’s Pontifications, & Captain’s Quarters for more.


Many people have also been stating that the White House has been inept in advancing this nominee but I do not see any evidence that the confirmation is in doubt. Bush has made over a hundred nominations over his terms, and EVERY one of them has been solid conservatives….why do conservatives doubt him now?

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Thanks for the link, Curt. Yup, I have been one of those who has fairly steadily blogged favorably about Miers, since I believe that there is a lot more to her than first impressions might indicate. Her law school is an excellent one, and one that can easily hold it’s institutional head up when compared to the Ivy Leagues. Her work experience, as a woman in the rough and tumble world of Texas law in the 1970s, is itself a testament to her intelligence and toughness. And (my own bias showing here), the fact that she hasn’t previously been on the bench is a huge plus in terms of the intellectual honesty she’d bring to the Supreme Court.