Quotes From The Right On The Miers Nomination

by John Hawkins | March 3, 2012 2:20 pm

The reaction on the right to the Harriet Miers nomination has ranged from tepid support, to bitter disappointment, to outrage and calls for Miers to withdraw. Here’s a sample of just some of the negative commentary on Miers from the right.

“Given her lack of experience, does anyone doubt that Ms. Miers’s only qualification to be a Supreme Court justice is her close connection to the president? Would the president have ever picked her if she had not been his lawyer, his close confidante, and his adviser?” –: Randy E. Barnett[1]

“Respectfully ‘ and mindful that you have made it a point of personal pride throughout your administration never to admit a personal mistake (I know you said recently that you “take responsibility” for problems encountered during the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, but that’s not the same as admitting you made a mistake) ‘ I urge you to pull the nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers to serve as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.” –: Bob Barr[2]

“The Miers nomination has led to some long-overdue soul-searching among conservative intellectuals. For many, the hope of finally turning around the judiciary was worth putting up with all the big government stuff. Thus, Bush’s pick of a patently unqualified crony for a critical position on the Supreme Court was the final straw.” –: Bruce Bartlett[3]

“The fact of the matter is, for over 20 years of her being involved in the law, she has not written one word, said one word, given a speech, written a letter to the editor on any of the key constitutional issues that conservatives care about and are worried about and want to make sure the court does not go down the road on. ‘[Bush] said he knows her. Lots of people have come forward this week that know her, and a number of them have said I can’t label her a conservative, a liberal or a moderate.’ –: Gary Bauer[4]

“With a single stroke–the nomination of Harriet Miers–the president has damaged the prospects for reform of a left-leaning and imperialistic Supreme Court, taken the heart out of a rising generation of constitutional scholars, and widened the fissures within the conservative movement. That’s not a bad day’s work–for liberals.” –: Robert Bork[5]

“But in the wake of Michael Brown’s debacle, Harriet Miers looks like Rita following Katrina.” –: Richard Brookhiser[6]

“There’s precious little to go on and a deep concern that this would be a Souter-type candidate. The circumstances seem to be very similar. Not much track record, people vouching for her, yet indications of a different thought pattern earlier in life.” — Senator: Sam Brownback[7]

“(H)er qualifications for the Supreme Court are non-existent. She is not a brilliant jurist, indeed, has never been a judge. She is not a scholar of the law. Researchers are hard-pressed to dig up an opinion. She has not had a brilliant career in politics, the academy, the corporate world or public forum. Were she not a friend of Bush, and female, she would never have even been considered.” –: Pat Buchanan[8]

“Finally, as disgusted as we are with President Bush for this timid and tepid choice, we cannot forget that it is Democrats who have brought us to this pass. I heard an NPR host a couple of weeks ago describing the nomination process as “polarized.” Some professor agreed that liberals vote only for liberals and conservatives only for conservatives. Nope. Conservative senators have, for the most part, voted to confirm liberal justices. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed by a vote of 96-3. Justice Stephen Breyer was approved by a vote of 87-9. Of course, when conservative senators voted for Ginsburg and Breyer, they could tell themselves that, after all, you couldn’t expect anything more acceptable out of Bill Clinton. What do they say to themselves now?” –: Mona Charen[9]

“Apparently no one stepped forward to warn the president what a monumentally bad idea he’d come up with when he selected Miers over dozens of other, better-qualified candidates….There is no one in the White House who has the nerve to tell the president that he should be worried when Democratic Sen. Harry Reid is more enthusiastic about his nominee than the editors of National Review.” —Linda Chavez[10]

“Miss Miers, after all, is by any standard the least-qualified Supreme Court nominee since Harry Truman picked his poker buddies. Among conservative women, not known for their prejudice against Republican females, she has drawn reactions ranging from tepid support to withering contempt. Finding a reason to reject this nomination is about as hard as finding sand at the beach. What’s tough is coming up with any rationale that would fool a fourth-grader.” –: Steve Chapman[11]

“The only sexism involved in the Miers nomination is the administration’s claim that once they decided they wanted a woman, Miers was the best they could do. Let me just say, if the top male lawyer in the country is John Roberts and the top female lawyer is Harriet Miers, we may as well stop allowing girls to go to law school.” –: Ann Coulter[12]

“Bush is our man. “We don’t have an alternative. I am not going to abandon him over this, but it is a real disappointment.” — Republican congressman,: John Doolittle[13]

“In the end, George Bush is just another public employee. He has a duty to do his best for the people who elected him, for the country that follows him, and for the constitution he swore to defend and uphold. In this case, he failed- worse, he refused. It would be best if this nomination were quietly and decently withdrawn. If not, it should be resisted.” –: David Frum[14]

“We really just want to trust the president on this as we did on so many big issues in the past ‘ homeland security, Iraq. At the same time, there is a feeling of being let down, as if all the work conservatives have done in the last few years has been for naught.” — Republican CongressmanScott Garrett[15]

“…I remain convinced Miers was a very, very bad pick. Even if Bush is 100-percent right about Miers, he’s done serious damage to his standing in the eyes of his base.” –: Jonah Goldberg[16]

“For a week now, I’ve been calling Miers the worst court pick since Portland took Sam Bowie over Charles Barkley, John Stockton and Michael Jordan in the ’84 NBA draft. I’ve been challenging her supporters’when I can find one’to give me a single reason to change my mind. I am left to conclude that such a reason, fact or argument simply does not exist. Miers defenders make no arguments, only demands. They demand that I be mindlessly loyal to President Bush and back any choice he makes, no matter how badly he betrays his constituents and the Constitution.” –: Michael Graham[17]

“If President Bush and Harriet Miers have solid evidence that she has become a Scalia-Thomas constitutionalist, they should make it public and defend it proudly in the Senate. Otherwise, conservative senators, who have their own duty to the Constitution and the future of our country, would be on solid ground asking the president to send up instead one of the many other excellent potential nominees who does have a constitutionalist record and the gumption to defend it.” —Terence Jeffrey[18]

“If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her.” –: Charles Krauthammer[19]

“What, exactly, would be the downside of her defeat? It would be a plus for the country, for conservatism, for the Republican Party, and even the administration could emerge stronger by issuing a mea culpa and nominating somebody we might actually want to support (along the lines of a customer becoming more loyal because of a problem that was successfully solved.)” –: Mark Krikorian[20]

“President Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers was an out-of-the-blue act of loyalty to a longtime staffer. Is it too much to hope that she might reciprocate by withdrawing, thereby sparing her boss the chance of lasting damage to his legacy that her appointment to the Supreme Court may well represent?” –: William Kristol[21]

“Increasingly, it looks as though we’ve got another O’Connor on our hands. I would love to be talked out of this. But the evidence mounts.” –: Stanley Kurtz[22]

“But, in truth, we already know what’s going on here, and that the president, despite a magnificent farm team from which to choose a solid nominee, chose otherwise. Miers was chosen for two reasons and two reasons alone: 1. she’s a she; 2. she’s a long-time Bush friend. Otherwise, there’s nothing to distinguish her from thousands of other lawyers.” –: Mark Levin[23]

“I just wait for the choice to be made, and it just seems to me that at the outset here that this is a pick that was made from weakness. There was an opportunity here to show strength and confidence, and I don’t think this is it. There are plenty of known quantities out there who would be superb for the court. This is a nominee that we don’t know anything about, a nominee purposely chosen in one context, we don’t know anything about her. It makes her less of a target but it also does not show a position of strength.” –: Rush Limbaugh[24]

“President Bush struck a blow for diversity on the Supreme Court by picking White House counsel Harriet Miers as his latest nominee. Bush thus made a strong statement that the court has room for highly distinguished justices and not-so-distinguished justices, for nominees who have made their reputations in the wider legal world and for nominees people have hardly heard of, for world-class lawyers and for lawyers he happens to know and like.” –: Rich Lowry[25]

“There are a lot more people – men, women and minorities – that are more qualified, in my opinion, by their experience than she is. Right now, I’m not satisfied with what I know. I’m not comfortable with the nomination, so we’ll just have to work through the process.” — Senator: Trent Lott[26]

“…Bush did not promise grass-roots conservatives that he’d put a Harry Reid-endorsed Cheer Bear on the court.” —Michelle Malkin[27]

“Was it for this, Mr. President? Was it for this that so many Americans made so many sacrifices, worked so hard, gave up family time, made life-changing decisions, took pains? Was it for this that so many prepared the way for so many years? Was it for this we gave you and 55 senators a mandate? For a Supreme Court nomination as unprincipled in its nature as this?” –: Manuel Miranda[28]

“Please, Harriet, do the right thing. Put the interests of this president, this nation, the Supreme Court and our shared conservative philosophy ahead of your own personal desire to serve on the Supreme Court today. Withdraw your name as a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.” –: Melanie Morgan[29], from Move America Forward

“My mother used to say: ‘It’s not enough to be Hungarian. You still need a little talent, too.’ To paraphrase her, its not enough to be conservative, you still need to have the brainpower to be a Supreme Court justice. And, if Harriet Miers is confirmed, she likely won’t be in the same league with her colleagues in terms of gray matter.” –: Dick Morris[30]

“The prudent course is for Miers to withdraw her own nomination in the interests of the president she loyally serves. The president could then start over. Both he and his party would probably benefit from having the clear fight over the direction of the courts that only a new nominee would allow.” –: National Review[31]

“That having been said, the Miers pick was another administration misstep. The president misread the field, the players, their mood and attitude. He called the play, they looked up from the huddle and balked. And debated. And dissed. Momentum was lost. The quarterback looked foolish.” –: Peggy Noonan[32]

“Had House members been able to attend the National Review banquet, they would have gotten an earful. While there to honor the magazine’s founder, William F. Buckley Jr., and all he has done for the conservative movement, these faithful conservatives were not shy about privately expressing their intense unhappiness. I could find nobody there who was not disappointed by the Miers nomination…” –: Robert Novak[33]

“The time has come for President Bush to realize and accept that his nomination of Harriet Miers to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court was ill-advised and he should withdraw her nomination.” —Stephen G. Peroutka[34], chairman of the board of governors for the National Pro-Life Action Center

“Bush did not need to go with stealth. The Roberts nomination proved that. People are saying this was a pick made out of weakness. I disagree. I think this was a pick made out of droit de seigneur — an “I am the president and this is what I want” arrogance. I think he’ll get what he wanted. Which means there will be at least two people — Bush and Harriet Miers — who will be delighted on the day she is sworn in. But probably not a whole lot more.” –: John Podhoretz[35]

“At the very moment that conservatives have begun to conclude that their bets on Mr. Bush are no longer paying off, Mr. Bush has asked them to double down. That request has even pro-Miers conservatives feeling disillusioned, and other conservatives feeling betrayed. That’s what’s dividing conservatives – and it’s why they’re thinking more and more about life after President Bush.” –: Ramesh Ponnuru[36]

“As Mr. Bush faces calls to withdraw the Miers nomination, he should think seriously about whether to accept them — along, perhaps, with the resignations of those responsible for this mess.” –: Glenn Reynolds[37]

“With regards to the Miers nomination, I think a lot of people, myself included, are disappointed in many respects, not despondent of course, but disappointed.” — Massachusetts Governor: Mitt Romney[38]

“I am concerned President Bush nominated someone who is a blank slate. I’m disappointed that he wanted to nominate someone like that instead of someone with a record. It is what I term the president’s second faith-based initiative, which is ‘trust me.’ I think, candidly, we deserve better than that.” –: Rick Santorum[39]

“No grass-roots conservatives who I know or hear from and who are not on the White House payroll are supporting Miers. What I’m asking — since this is hurting Republicans so much — is: ‘Why are Bush and his people doing this?'” — Republican consultant: Rick Shafton[40]

“The bottom line is this: Miers is a disappointing pick.” –: Ben Shapiro[41]

“(Miers) needs a crash course in constitutional law.’ — Senator: Arlen Specter[42]

“Bush has turned his finest hour into a political debacle. The reverberations from his decision to nominate Harriet Miers have political consequences, if not corrected, that will haunt the Republican Party for some time.” –: Mathew D. Staver[43], president of Liberty Council

“Conventional wisdom still has it that Miers is a shoo-in for confirmation. We’re not so sure. From what we saw last night, the right is furious at President Bush for appointing someone they see as manifestly underqualified and for ducking a fight with the Democratic left–a fight that, in their view (and ours), would be good for the country, the conservative cause and the Republican Party. Bush may be getting a fight anyway. And while he can laugh off the Angry Left, which would never support him no matter what he did, the Angry Right is a force he’d be a fool to misunderestimate.” –: James Taranto[44]

“I told Mehlman that I had had five ‘trust-mes’ in my long history here…and I said, ‘I’m sorry, but the president saying he knows her heart is insufficient.” –: Paul Weyrich[45]

“It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court’s tasks. The president’s “argument” for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.” –: George Will[46]