Could the Republicans kick Miers?

[jmowreader]

This might be a fantasy scenario, but follow along.

First, we know Miers is highly unpopular. We don't like her, nor does the Right.

We also know Miers hasn't ever been a judge. This is enough to raise eyebrows.

Combine Miers' judicial experience with her experiences as Bush's fixer, with her Texas Lottery Commission history, with the 8/6/2001 PDB problem, and her absolute specialization in corporate law, and it's clear that Harriet Miers doesn't belong on the Supreme Court.

The question is, is there a high-ranking Republican Senator who agrees?

Republicans doing fairly trivial things to prove they don't have fealty to their absolute leaders is kind of a tradition. Check out the first few months of the Gingrich Congress, where the freshman representatives Gingrich brought in tended to vote en masse against accepting the minutes of the previous day's business into the Congressional Record--this so they could go back to their constituents and say "see? I DON'T vote in lockstep with the Speaker! In fact, I only have a 91 percent lockstep rating!" (And when you filtered out all the Nays on the proforma shit, you discovered that yes, your congressman and Newt voted identically.)

Let's pull out a name: Arlen Spector. Imagine that Spector went to Bush and told him all of these things: "Mr. President, we can't approve Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. We just can't and we won't. It looks really bad, for one thing--like we're signing off on another one of your cronies. This could really damage us in 2006, especially because there's the slim chance that we could make history on this one by placing a nominee on the Supreme Court without one Democratic vote. We don't know who she really is. You won't let us know anything about the work she's done for you since you got elected in 2000, and because of her history as a corporate lawyer pretty much her entire private career is protected by attorney-client privilege. Plus, there's the media. Yes, I know you hate them and you have every right to, but listen, Mr. President: the media is starting to look into her background and what they're finding isn't good. They know she reviewed your Air National Guard file in 1998. They know she was on the Texas Lottery Commission. They know she briefed you on Osama in August 2001. They know her law firm has been sued repeatedly. I don't see how we can put Ms. Miers on the Supreme Court without losing some seats in Congress. Your magical ballot stuffing machine isn't that good.

"Mr. President, I think we can save you some face here. I am the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. If Ms. Miers can't get through my committee, she can't get on the Supreme Court and I won't let her out of it. Simple as that. Furthermore, I won't let any judge you appointed out of my committee. We will reject fifty judges if we have to. There's an alternative, and you need to consider it. President Reagan placed a lot of conservative judges on the federal bench. My staff went through all of President Reagan's appointees and pulled out the women. Then we sorted them in order of judicial temperament. Any of the six women at the top of the list are completely reliable conservatives--some of them are to the right of you. Plus, they have massive records following them; none of them is a mystery. Pick one of these people and it's a win for us. We honor President Reagan by elevating a judge he believed in to the Supreme Court. We completely dismiss any allegations of cronyism. We get a good, reliable, experienced justice, and we get someone we can confirm without too much trouble.

"That's how it stands, Mr. President. If you insist on our looking at Ms. Miers, we will reject her. Choose one of President Reagan's judges and we'll approve her with great pleasure."

The question is, will they do it?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

1. Ummmmmm

No

[connecticut yankee]

2. They'll get one

"This could really damage us in 2006, especially because there's the slim chance that we could make history on this one by placing a nominee on the Supreme Court without one Democratic vote."

Lieberman.

[jmowreader]

4. Oh, they'd get three or four Democratic votes

Remember, I said SLIM chance.

The odds of a prominent Republican actually going to Chimpy McCokespoon and telling him no on ANYTHING--especially something this important--are very, very low. But there's always the chance, isn't there?

I think this one could really damage the Republican Party. The ideologues out there are looking for someone to do very specific things. Abortion is a popular one, so let's go there. Let us imagine that an abortion-case petition that can't be used to overturn Roe is filed. The Supreme Court receives thousands of petitions every year and almost all of them are rejected out of hand--there's no way one court could hear them all, so they just take the really juicy stuff. Anyway, let's say that Miers is handed a stack of petitions and told to pick five cases for the full Court to consider. She reads the abortion petition and puts it in her reject bin because it's something pretty inconsequential. The ideologues find out she rejected an abortion petition...oh my god, she could have saved All The Babies by taking this case and overturning Roe with it! Next thing you know, the Republicans get blamed for putting this baby killer on the Supreme Court without knowing anything about her.

[napi21]

3. Sure that could happen, BUT the Pubs that are fighting this are

the ones who want a Janice Rogers Brown, or Luddig. Which is worse? An unknown quantity in Miers, or a KNOWN quantity of RW NUT in the other two? I honestly don't know.