Harriet Miers Withdraws

Looks like Harriet Miers has thrown in the towel. Withdrawal letter here. I have mixed but mostly bad feelings about this. Oh, I agree she wasn't necessarily the most impressive candidate possible. Nonetheless, she was (is!) qualified, and what was done to her, and done by the President's alleged political allies, rises almost to the level of what happend to Bork. Those who raised such a storm of protest against her and damned be the consequences failed to consider what happens next.



Yes, now we have a chance at Luttig or Brown or some other well known basically conservative jurist. But like it or not, the president is now weakened politically by the Miers firestorm. Had he managed to ram her nomination through, the damage would have been minimal. Now it is significant.



The president now has fewer options and less leverage. Whoever he nominates is going to face a much increased level of Donkey scrutiny and activism.



He can nominate an "in your face" conservative such as Luttig, and with the Miers withdrawal emboldening them, the Donkeys will make it such a circus as Bork never saw. Somebody like that might still get confirmed on a party line vote, but it would take a lot of political capital and would energize the Donkeys for next year. It would also absolutely require a confirmation performance at least as good as Judge Roberts made to have any chance at keeping the moderate senators such as Snowe in the Elephant vote column. The Elephants would have to use the "cloture on a majority vote" option. Call it nuclear, call it constitutional, call it hamburger - it's not something he wants to have to do at this point. There's a lot more peril that it would fail at this point than there was last spring before the "Gang of 14," and if it fails it's all over.



President Bush could nominate a centrist and likely get them confirmed, and be thought even weaker than he is. Furthermore, it would eliminate any chance of getting a strong conservative on the court if here were to get a subsequent choice (say if Stevens retires) unless and until he has some other major victory.



He could nominate a moderate liberal and announce to the world that there's blood in the water. Presidency over. Lame duckhood starts here.



Finally, he can nominate another cipher like Harriet Miers. Whoever it is will face a level of scrutiny neither Miers nor Roberts nor any justice since Bork has seen. The Donkeys now know that the president's nominees can be beaten. If they are the type of justice I would like to see, the overwhelming odds are that the evidence of it will come out, and now the Donkeys are in full hue and cry while the Elephants are almost certainly caught flatfooted again. Advantage: Donkeys.



Best guess and best hope: One thing a lot of people don't understand about President Bush is that he's got cojones. The president will find a severely qualified conservative jurist smart enough to understand the politically generated hell they are going to go through in confirmation, and loyal enough to stick it out to the end even if the nomination appears doomed. The point is that's the only way to get some control of the confirmation process back, by naming someone who possesses the obvious qualifications to be on the court who is nonetheless subjected to something that makes what happened to Robert Bork downright friendly. Even if the Donkeys win that vote, they lose politically. If they lose it, they break even - both sides are energized, the Donkeys by the loss, the Elephants by what the Donkeys did to this poor person who is obviously qualified for the post. Nonetheless, this strategy is politically risky and could well fail, and take the possibility of President Bush accomplishing anything else significant with the rest of his term down with it. In which case I will tell those who whipped up the storm against Miers, (sarcasm)"Thank You Ever So Much."(/sarcasm).



Looks like Hugh Hewitt agrees with me and has a suggestion arrived at by process of elimination. To which I ask: How much staying power has McConnell got? Because he's going to need it.



Scrappleface manages to say the correct things with a smile that takes away the pain.