Friday, October 07, 2005

Harriet Miers: It's the loyalty, stupid

Right now my honest to God view on why this unimpressive person is being nominated to the U.S. High Court (when there are numerous other women who have worked with Constitutional issues on courts across the country, not to mention law firms, the government, and universities), is that Bush is anticipating a time when he and his administration will be sued for release of documents. In that case, having someone on the court who is a personal friend and basically owes her career to him will be advantageous. George W. Bush is a second term President, meaning he does not have to worry about pleasing a religious right base for votes anymore. Though Miers also seems sufficiently conservative (yet another problem with her), Bush's main reason for nominating her is the loyalty factor. The reason he is so concerned about loyalty on the court (and not necessary loyalty to an ideology like "strict constructionism,"--though let's not get too surprised when Miers makes exceedingly business-friendly decisions) is because his administration did some bad things, and those will likely be reflected by documents he would like to remain forever classified. He couldn't find a person more sympathetic to defending "executive privilege" (or at least his executive privilege--this may be one of those things that only applies to Bush, as Bush v. Gore did, if a President Hillary Clinton is in the White House and facing a similar suit) than Harriet Miers.

1 comment:

Chris said...

A couple of weeks ago I predicted in another comment that the next nominee wouldn't pass through the Senate.

I think she's going to be run over by several Mac trucks during her confirmation hearings.

There's really no other explanation for the nomination other than hubris because the consequences are so huge. Already 9 of the 10 top DC law firms have withdrawn their donations from the GOP (and have stopped doing pro bono work for the WH) and top private donors are beginning to do the same. We all know that she's unqualified and that when Bush says "Trust me" he's back on crack again (metaphorically speaking).