What the fuck is the White House up to now? Harriet "Seriously, Where the Hell Did I Come From" Miers nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States? Oliver Wendell Holmes just literally rolled over - very slowly mind you - in his separate but equal grave. As orgasmically satisfying as it is to watch conservatives throw Napoleonic tantrums all day about this nomination, I just cannot believe that the Bush administration has miscalculated their base's response so badly. Something is decidedly amiss in DC and it smells a lot like Karl Rove's creamy, hairless ass, which, incidentally, smells a lot like a rat. This absolutely has to be some kind of evil genius ploy. How else to explain such an inexplicable nomination, one that pleases neither conservatives nor liberals, nor any other pleasable or identifiable political faction for that matter - other than Harry Reid (who is acting freakishly like Miers is his grandmother) and "The Texas League of Single Old White Ladies for Essentially No Independent Political Agenda in America" of course, who are claiming this as a huge victory for "perplexing non-eventism." Hell, even moderates can't figure where the high and mighty middle ground is yet. Who is this old woman we are all asking ourselves? Other than an uncomfortable love for black eyeliner and gaudy Church attire, what are her passions?
She appears to be everything that John G. Roberts was not, unqualified, unknown and unpredictable. Roberts was an ideal pick for the White House because his legal record and resume was unassailable. He certainly had an impressive amount of trial experience with the Supreme Court, even if almost always on the wrong side, and he could reliably fall back on the "just representing my client" card for any unsavory bits of rightwing craziness he may have said in the past. Even if Roberts was presented with a memo in which he stated that black people had smaller brains than whites or that torturing gays can be good training exercises for our soldiers when not at war, he could simply deflect those political asteroids towards his then client, Ronald Reagan, where they would be immediately burned up in Reagan's flaming helio-atmospheric aura of political invincibility. Having watched most of the confirmation hearings, even I found Roberts frustratingly likeable. His mildly disturbing conservative ideology and handsy cub-scout-troop-leader creepiness was overshadowed by his ultra nice-guy reasonableness and his finely polished Harvardian uber-competence. With his round, overly-attentive, tumescent-eyed face, his mellifluous Midwesterny Christianiness, he had the look of a newborn Republican baby just squeezed out of the dusty, hateful womb of Barbara Bush to gasp in fright at the nefarious and multi-ethnic world for the very first time. Roberts face radiated a preternatural innocence like some innate Darwinistic defense mechanism to ward off the bloodthirsty fangs of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee from his exposed jugular. At one point during the hearings I am pretty sure that Chuck Schumer wanted to jump over the dais and hug the shit out of Roberts and somehow try to re-civilize him as if he were a newly found wolf-child - "Come on John, you are a smart guy, you can see how fucked up it is to force poverty-stricken women to have babies they can't raise, can't you? Johnny, admit it, NASCAR sucks doesn't it?" Most importantly though, Roberts really did know constitutional law backwards and forwards, mostly backwards, whether or not he gave a fuck about those it affected.
Miers, on the other hand, has no judicial experience to look to and so it seems very few statements to illuminate her potential judicial philosophy on the bench. Her most controversial statement to date, as if in an effort to preemptively disclaim any intelligence of her own, that she considers George W. Bush to be the most brilliant man she has ever met! Oh yes, suddenly freaked-out reader, she was talking the same George W. Bush that's currently our President. Extreme loyalty to George W. Bush is scary enough on principle, but this country is in some truly deep shit if Miers has to call Dubya at the ranch in the middle of one of his famous digging in the dirt sessions to get his thoughts on a constitutional question of law before ruling. But, I think here is where we find the real answer to this nomination. I believe this nomination is a very specific reaction to the great Sandra Day O'Connor debacle of 1981. O'Connor, a relatively conservative judicial figure nominated by Reagan, back-fired on the right because eventually she decided that her commitment to her job and her own ideology overpowered her loyalty to her benefactors. The best way to avoid a similar incident, nominate a deeply entrenched political crony who is completely unqualified for the post and, consequently, passionately devoted to you and your agenda - someone lacking any political inclinations of their own. My bet is that the young Brooks Brothers boys in the West Wing are frantically calling every wingnut in the beltway right now to assure them that Miers has explicit instructions to vote in all matters with Justice Scalia. The right already has the ideology they want on the Court, now what they need is a little lubrication. They need another yes-man, or yes-woman as it were. Clarence "Pubes" Thomas is already up there to give some desperately-needed African-American mojo to their cause, Roberts has just given them some intellectual and constitutional credibility, now Bush has added the last piece to the puzzle, some pseudo-women's-rights credibility wrapped up in a five foot two public relations package, but more importantly, a guaranteed fifth vote. They have essentially just taken the swing out of the swing vote.
The problem though is that the conservative punditry wants a controversial ideologue more than it really wants an additional vote, as that's the only way we get to the impending culture war they have been so endlessly pining for. They want to watch the left squirm a bit. Nobody likes to catch a dead fish, you want a little fight to make it worthwhile. At some point though, I think they will, reluctantly, get on the same page as the Administration on this one. They still have a long confirmation process to talk about assless-pantsed homos leering at their children and the ACLU's infamous Sunday night fetus-death cocktail parties. The Democrats best bet, of course, would be to attack Miers on her glaring lack of qualifications for the job, something difficult for the Republicans to counter since it became the keystone theme of Roberts' confirmation. However, they will be wary of doing so for fear that, if they do in fact court-block Miers, the White House will put up a much more gratuitously rightwing nominee in response. But I think they need to be careful of getting too excited about the negative response of Republicans. Although almost always true, just because Rush Limbaugh is against something doesn't make it righteous. I just can't buy the notion that George Bush is cowering to the political pressure from the left to avoid a fight. After Iraq, tax cuts, stem-cells, Plamegate, Katrina, does it seem credulous to anyone that Bush in his final term is really scared of pissing off liberals? The angle isn't completely clear here yet, but its there somewhere, hiding underneath Miers' purple, pleated Gospel gear. Maybe its nothing more complicated than Bush rewarding someone for having the gargantuan balls to call him brilliant in public.
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