Today's homily

Hugh Hewitt who's been mulling the Miers controversy over for the last week while on vacation:

I was surprised, and remained surprised, at how quickly the assault on the nominee began, and how it escalated in intensity and rhetorical excess as the weeks have passed. There are a hundred motives for these attacks, but those from my friends in the conservative movement have been motivated primarily though not exclusively by the concern that Miers will get these crucial issues wrong, and yet another opportunity to redirect the SCOTUS towards its intended role will be lost.

Does anyone among the conservatives really not believe that President Bush has a different concern? Of all the charges from the right that are disappointing, the most disappointing charge that the president abandoned his principles to promote a “crony,” The left believes it, of course, but they also believe he went to war knowing there were no WMD and at the behest of Halliburton.

The concern pre-nomination was “not another Souter.” When Judge Edith Clement’s name surfaced just prior to the unveiling of Chief Justice Robert’s nomination, there was much “another Souter” muttering. So now the president picks the anti-Souter, the person he knows best from among all the candidates, a gun-owning, anti-abortion, White House participant for all four years in the GWOT, and immediately the assault begins? Miers was compared to Caligula’s horse, and denounced by luminaries on the right as unacceptable because they do not know her. This is nothing like any reaction to a nominee in memory. And if there is any precedent for the president’s own supporters to turn on a SCOTUS nominee in such a fashion, I am unaware of it. In fact, I am trying to recall a single instance of any high profile nominee ever being treated in such a fashion by members of the nominating president’s own party.. . .

[I]t is nothing short of astonishing, that Robert Bork would lead a campaign to Bork a different GOP nominee, or that George Will would denounce anti-anti-Miers people as degraded partisans incapable of understanding conservatism.

I not just surprised, I'm repelled by the arrogance and elitism displayed by those who have jumped on Miers before they knew anything about her. What contempt they must have for President Bush! I've noted that before, as many of these same people seemed to have absorbed the view that things were going terribly in Iraq, and fretted over the size of the deficits, when they are not out of line as a percentage of the GDP, especially during a time of war.

I would have vetoed the Farm Bill and the Trans Bill, too, but then I'm not privy to the kinds of political considerations he has to take into account. I can fully understand it if Bush just believes that it's not his job to keep a rein on the members of Congress, who are, after all, elected by the public too. I would have vetoed the McCain-Feingold Bill too, but I expect that he assumed the Court would strike it down, as it should have. That's their job, not his. It suggests to me that he has more respect for other officeholders than most other conservatives. To me, that's a defensible position. Why should the President be accountable for the stupidity of the other branches?

Anyway, go read Hugh's whole post. It's long, but carefully thought out and written. It's the best answer to Miers' enemies, I've seen. (And they are enemies, adversaries, contrary to their claim to being advocates, and I consider them untrustworthy from now on.)

To add to their unhappiness and discomfort with people like George W. Bush and me, I will quote scripture:

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

The weak things of the world shall come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones, that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh—

Wherefore, I call upon the weak things of the world, those who are unlearned and despised, to thrash the nations by the power of my Spirit;

Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace, and his great condescensions unto the children of men, that we have power to do these things.

And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.

President Bush is a humble man. He seeks the inspiration of God, and as far as I can see, he receives it and he has faith. I've seen him succeed again and again in the face of the opinion of the "wise and prudent." I support him.