Bush supporters' aftermath thread

Here is a completely different take on the Miers nomination by my favorite economist, expert on human nature, and philosopher. It is in a way reassuring and in a way distressing:

October 7, 2005
Republican Senate Is Weak, Not Bush
By Thomas Sowell

Conservatives who have for years contributed time, money, and sweat to help elect Republicans have often been justifiably outraged at the way the Republicans have then let them down, wimped out, or even openly betrayed the promises on which they were elected.

Much of that frustration and anger is now being directed at President Bush for his nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Why not someone like Judge Janice Rogers Brown or any of a number of other identifiable judges with a proven history of upholding conservative judicial principles under fire?

Looming in the background is the specter of people like Justice Anthony Kennedy, who went on the High Court with a "conservative" label and then succumbed to the Washington liberal culture. But while the past is undeniable, it is also not predestination.

This administration needs to be held responsible for its own shortcomings but not those of previous Republican administrations.

Rush Limbaugh has aptly called this a nomination made from a position of weakness. But there are different kinds of weakness and sometimes the difference matters.

President Bush has taken on too many tough fights -- Social Security being a classic example -- to be regarded as a man who is personally weak. What is weak is the Republican majority in the Senate.

When it comes to taking on a tough fight with the Senate Democrats over judicial nominations, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist doesn't really have a majority to lead. Before the President nominated anybody, before he even took the oath of office for his second term, Senator Arlen Specter was already warning him not to nominate anyone who would rile up the Senate. Later, Senator John Warner issued a similar warning. It sounded like a familiar Republican strategy of pre-emptive surrender.

Before we can judge how the President played his hand, we have to consider what kind of hand he had to play. It was a weak hand -- and the weakness was in the Republican Senators.

Does this mean that Harriet Miers will not be a good Supreme Court justice if she is confirmed? It is hard to imagine her being worse than Sandra Day O'Connor -- or even as bad.

The very fact that Harriet Miers is a member of an evangelical church suggests that she is not dying to be accepted by the beautiful people, and is unlikely to sell out the Constitution of the United States in order to be the toast of Georgetown cocktail parties or praised in the New York Times. Considering some of the turkeys that Republicans have put on the Supreme Court in the past, she could be a big improvement.

We don't know. But President Bush says he has known Harriet Miers long enough that he feels sure.

For the rest of us, she is a stealth nominee. Not since The Invisible Man has there been so much stealth.

That's not ideal by a long shot. But ideal was probably never in the cards, given the weak sisters among the Republicans' Senate "majority."

There is another aspect of this. The Senate Democrats huffed and puffed when Judge John Roberts was nominated but, in the end, he faced them down and was confirmed by a very comfortable margin.

The Democrats cannot afford to huff and puff and then back down, or be beaten down, again. On the other hand, they cannot let a high-profile conservative get confirmed without putting up a dogfight to satisfy their left-wing special interest groups.

Perhaps that is why some Democrats seem to welcome this stealth nominee. Even if she turns out to vote consistently with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the Democrats are off the hook with their base because they can always say that they had no idea and that she stonewalled them at the confirmation hearings.

The bottom line with any Supreme Court justice is how they vote on the issues before the High Court. It would be nice to have someone with ringing rhetoric and dazzling intellectual firepower. But the bottom line is how they vote. If the President is right about Harriet Miers, she may be the best choice he could make under the circumstances.

SOURCE

Sowell is one of my favorites as well (I love the "Random Thoughts on a Passing Scene" columns and everybody should read his book "The Vision of the Anointed") but he has it wrong here. Conservatives wanted an experienced known person sitting on the bench not a ? that we have to wait to see what we get.

What he does have right is our party is turning into spineless, gutless spendthrifts. We wanted this fight. We have the majority and are acting like the minority. I am sick and tired of watching the Dems get what they want by bullying us around. If our representatives were to scared to fight for us then we need new representatives. Instead it is going to be business as usual.

I don't know. Was it worth putting up a better candidate that the GOP would not fight for? Spector as much as said he wouldn't. Or is the more practical choice this 'unknown' who actually may make a fine addition for the orginalist/constructionist end of the Court? The quarterback doesn't throw the ball to the butterfingered receiver if a better player is open.

But yes, I agree. The GOP is not behaving as winners of several elections in a row. And they are dangerously close to abandoning their conservative base. The conservative Democrats departed their party when it left them. There is no reason to believe that conservative Republicans would not do the same. Those Democrats had a place to go, however. Unfortunately, those in the GOP don't. Yet.

I think I posted earlier in the thread that I too wanted a knock down drag out fight over this nominee. I wanted the GOP to have to enact the nuclear option to break a fillibuster. I wanted them to stand up on their hind legs and act like the grown ups and the winners that we elected them to be.

Maybe the President will withdraw the nomination or maybe she will change her mind and resign from it. I don't think many would be upset by that.

I do tend to agree with Sowell that Bush is not the problem though.

Exactly. If they aren't going to stand up for what we/they believe in, then what is the use in voting for them again?



I think a strong nomination could have forced congress into that fight. Either they fight for what we want or they give in again and infuriate their base. I think many of them are at least bright enough to realize that failure, in our eyes, is not an option. Now we might not ever know.

And don't you think that it is not Miers so much as the fact they weren't willing to fight for us that has everybody so angry?

I think it is both.

1.) We have an unknown when there were other candidates that were more than qualified to choose from.

2.) If what Sowell stated is true (that they would not have fought and Bush merely nominated the best he could get through) then that is a seperate issue even though it is brought on by #1.

There is also a third option, however, that Bush really does believe Miers is the best choice he had for the job. Maybe she is. We don't know.

I wonder how much bourbon she sinks on a nightly basis?

Wondering how well she likes cigars?

I love the childlike faith in Bush that some exhibit here. It's so touching. "We can only hope that President Bush knows what he's doing in choosing this unknown woman for the Supreme Court."

I think I'm gonna start weeping...

We can only hope that President Bush knows what he's doing in invading a goddam country so he can build a goddam democracy out of it.

Wait...he already did that, din't he? Christ.....

I would like to loop back to another item: Mayor Nagin

"Nagin also expressed concern that local workers are being shut out of jobs by laborers from Mexico. "How do I ensure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers?" he said."

source

Imagine the outrage over such a statement if it had been made by a white Republican mayor. Perhaps such outrage has been expressed within A2K postings. I'll have to take a look.

Well, since the complete US economy lost only 35,000 jobs in September, Nagin's fears seem heavily exaggerated.

Foxy, I think this is the most likely scenario.

John Roberts had me with his statement concerning the role of international law in the United States court system. That will be my litmus test for Miers as well, and if she is asked and makes a similar statement to Roberts', then I'll be happy to see her confirmed.

Walter, The total workers in New Orleans numbered over 600,000 before Katrina. I'm not sure what kind of math the Department of Labor is using, but it's nothing like the math we learned in school. 35,000 lost jobs is impossible by any twisting of arithmetic.

Yes, c.i, for normal people that's correct.

Another issue not being addressed by the Department of Labor is the simple fact that the loss of jobs in New Orleans also impacts people not even living in New Orleans. All the suppliers, transportation, and producers of products will also be impacted by this loss. I've always felt uneasy about the Department of Labor's unemployment numbers. I can now understand why.

Your arithmetic implies that there is a lump of jobs available to Americans, of which 600,000 were eliminated by Katrina. If these implications hold, one would expect 600,000 jobs to be missing rather than 35,000. But it is entirely possible, even probable, that both implications are wrong: Somewhere outside of New Orleans, employers may have created jobs to prepare for the reconstruction. More importantly though: there is no lump of jobs! The number of jobs is not a constant, but a variable of their price, i.e., the wage. By dislocating from New Orleans, the people who used to live there may have bid the wages in the rest of America a teeny bit below what it was before Katrina. Because there are 150-200 million jobs in the rest of America, it doesn't take much bidding down to make room for 600 thousand more.

I don't think the BLS's figure is impossible or twisted at all. It's what you expect in a well-working market economy.

Thomas,

It is difficult to overcome Cicerone's evident preference for far-fetched conspiracy theories - when they involve Republican government - with mere facts and logic.

In all of their public utterances and particularly in their frequently reversed and usually ill-conceived decisions (not to mention their failed oversight of the local government body responsible for the maintenance of the levees that failed) the Mayor of New Orleans and the Goverrnor of Loiusiana have amply demonstrated their opportunism and incompetence. Despite this Cicerone focuses on imagined Federal conspiracies.

There is also the consideration that all jobs in New Orleans were not lost--shop owners, business owners, etc. are insured and not listed, at least yet, among the ranks of the unemployed. A great many of the displaced people were also already among the ranks of the unemployed when they were displaced--New Orleans had a much larger welfare class than most American cities. And of course many of the displaced were among the retired who will continue to receive their retirement and social security checks or among the still-too-young-to-work group.

So far as I know, all the refugees who wound up in Albuquerque and wanted work have found it.

Still others have returned to their old jobs in New Orleans itself.

I think the 35000 'lost jobs' could actually be on the high side but nevertheless, that is an entirely plausible number.

I wish it was feasible for the government to put up temporary housing, a tent city, or whatever, and put all the unemployed there to receive hiring preferences in the rebuilding of New Orleans. That could be the best possible outcome of this whole nightmare.