Anyhow. It seems to me that with a solid Republican majority in the Senate and a Republican president, the best that Democrats can hope for is damage control. Miers is, after all, a name that Harry Reid himself put forward to Bush.

I hope that the discussion doesn’t focus on the fact that she has never been a judge — it’s a recent development on the Supreme Court that virtually all nominees have judicial experience, and some people I respect argue that this has been bad for the court.

P.S. I think a lot of people would be upset if Bush knocked up Hillary, assuming that’s even possible at her age. (Yes, I know the British idiom is different.)

‘Anything that angers the lefties on this blog is praiseworthy to me. I think Bush is very smart to choose Miers and I think all of us conservs will be delighted with his choice for the next 20+ years. Now all we need is one more handpicked christian supreme court appoinment and we can get back to the original intent and purpose of the USA, to be the salt and light to the world of a Christian nation and to be the dominant world superpower and economic power so that we can provide leadership tot he rest of the world, even the often thought “lost” middle eastern Islamic nations and the secular, atheist European has beens.’

Moshe might be interested in that, in light of the conversation in another thread about constitutional seperation of church and state. It’s not over yet at all, that debate. Significant elements of Bush’s base have been literally praying for years in order to get a pro-christian stacked court.

“The president’s nomination of Miers is a betrayal of the conservative, pro-family voters whose support put Bush in the White House in both the 2000 and 2004 elections and who were promised Supreme Court appointments in the mold of Thomas and Scalia. … When there are so many proven judges in the mix, it is unacceptable this president has appointed a political crony with no conservative credentials.” — Eugene Delgaudio, president of the conservative group Public Advocate.

Bush knows her best, and I guess that he may be able to persuade his base to fall in line. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if it’s up to the Dems to decide whether she goes through, which is somewhat interesting. If they knock her down, who’ll he put up instead? That said, if Bush can’t sell her to his base, maybe she’ll conveniently step down for some reason or other.

The fact that she’s not been a judge doesn’t seem to be such a big deal (indeed, Rehnquist himself had no judicial experience before his appointment to the Supreme Court); in this case, presumably part of the reason that people with short or no judicial history are Bush’s picks is primarily because of the increasingly forensic examination of past judicial decisions and writings; many of the conservatives fear another Borking and certainly, they fear getting another Souter (indeed, some of the people at redstate.org appear to fear that Miers is another Souter).

Zero