Conservablogger Hugh Hewitt continues to stand almost alone in defending the Miers nomination. He's also lashing out at his fellow RWers who've left the Bush plantation, including the seemingly law school snooty David Frum. From Frum's blog:
Those who object to the Miers nomination do not object to her lack of credentials. They object to her lack of what the credentials represent: some indication of outstanding ability.
The objection to Miers is not that she is not experienced enough or not expensively enough educated for the job. It is that she is not good enough for the job...
Ouch! Frum goes on to say that the Miers nom actually "does a disservice, not just to conservatives, but to the whole country":
All Americans are entitled to know that those judges who exercise the power of judicial review have thought hard and deeply about the immense power entrusted to them. If the courts were just about getting the votes, then the preisdent should have chosen Dennis Hastert for the Supreme Court. But to change American law, it's not enough to win the vote count. You have to win the argument. And does anybody believe Harriet Miers can win an argument against Stephen Breyer?
And to boot, he makes an argument against Miers that I for one, agree with: that the nomination of Miers was an act of pure presidential authority-mongering -- a paternal approach to governing that's downright King George I:
The president's defense of Miers in many ways amplified the problem. His case for her boils down to: "Because I say so" and "She really is a nice person."
But "because I say so" is not an argument. It is an assertion of pure authority. And have not the great conservative legal minds of the past three decades warned again and again that the courts have gone wrong precisely because they have relied too much on authority and too little on argument?
"She really is a nice person" likewise is a statement grounded on feeling rather than thought. And don't conservatives object to legal liberalism precisely because it is based on sloppy emotion rather than disciplined thought?
Legal conservatism is a powerful and compelling school of thought. The Scalias and the Thomases and the Rehnquists have changed the law not by forcing their positions on the country by brute vote-counting, but by persuasion. That's why, to pick out just one example, that Bush v Gore was decided by a 7-2 majority and not lost 3 to 6.
This president has never believed much in persuasion. He believes that the president should declare and that the country should then follow. But judges cannot and should not do that. He should have chosen a justice who could lead by power of intellect, and not because she possesses 1/9 of the votes on the supreme judicial body...
But back to Hewitt ... in a subsequent post, Hewitt takes aim at arguably the Republicans' best 2008 presidential nominee, John McCain (good news for Hillary...) asserting what could be the kiss of death argument against the Arizona Senator from those on what we can, for now, still call the "Bush right": he's loyal only to his own ambition.
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%>
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url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
