Harriet Miers

Submitted by Alon Levy on October 8, 2005 - 4:14am.

If the religious right is feigning indignation over Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court in order to get liberals to acquiesce to this move, it is doing a remarkably good job of keeping up the act. If with Roberts a few ultra-conservatives such as James Dobson expressed concern that he wasn't a homophobe, with Miers it seems that the Religious Right is entirely up in arms.

The San Francisco Chronicle documents statements by several key conservatives who beg Bush to withdraw her nomination. It's not just James Dobson this time: it's failed Reagan judicial nominee Robert Bork, an unnamed Republican Senator, The Republican National Coalition for Life, the director of the Christian Defense Coalition, Operation Rescue, and William Kristol.

When Roberts refused to disclose his judicial philosophy beyond vague statements about being merely an umpire, the American liberal blogosphere said it was still certain he was a Rehnquist-style conservative because unlike Souter, he had had judicial experience and clear conservative cred. Curiously, now the same bloggers who emphasized well-formed judicial views have changed their litmus test for an obvious conservative, now that evidence that Miers is a true conservative is scant.

If you worry about Miers' being a conservative hack, remember that Stevens, Souter, O'Connor, and Kennedy were all supposed to be reliably right-wing. Again, we see Bush snub the religious right, which will predictably support his party yet again in 2008 like a battered wife who always goes back to her abusive husband.

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