Harriet Miers will be confirmed as the next associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, or rejected by as bizarre a conjunction of political forces as this city has seen in some time.
Let’s stipulate that Senate investigators find no hidden flaws in Miers’ character, and that no records are unearthed revealing her secret passion to overturn (or uphold) Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 abortion rights case.
Certainly, there is a lively group of Senate Democrats who announced, during the confirmation process for Chief Justice John Roberts, an intention to vote against any nominee who won’t pledge to protect abortion rights.
And James Dobson’s public announcements that he has gotten secret assurances (“I know things that I probably should not know”) that Miers will vote to stop abortion may ignite liberal concerns.
But the Roberts confirmation process also showed there are Democrats who respect a president’s right to name Supreme Court justices, and believe in bipartisan civility. Many, like Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., have gone on record urging President Bush to nominate a woman or minority candidate.
Even the most fervent, Bush-hating Democrats must ponder how voters would view a nasty confirmation fight against a doughty woman lawyer who bested the good ol’ boys of the Texas legal establishment and, while not cloaking herself in the title, has been a champion of feminist values.
There is appreciation, as well, that the Democrats have dodged bullets when it comes to Bush’s opportunity to recast the Supreme Court. The president, weakened politically in ways no one imagined when he took his victory laps last fall, appears to have ducked the ideological showdown his conservative supporters were hoping for.
Given some of the candidates Bush might have named for chief justice, “the Democrats should have gotten down on their knees to be given a nominee as intelligent and moderate as Roberts,” says George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., spoke for many of his colleagues when he said, upon receiving news of the Miers nomination, “My first reaction is a simple one: It could have been a lot worse.”
On the Republican side of the aisle, the most notable reaction was the grousing among disappointed “movement” conservatives who, in the words of radio host Rush Limbaugh, “want the fight, who see the Left teetering on the brink of obscurity here and irrelevance and want this fight to just nail them to the wall.”
But Republicans are a hierarchical bunch. And Miers quickly won the preliminary blessing of GOP chaplain Dobson and administration loyalists like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, as well as from centrist mavericks like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. If the Senate’s 55 Republicans close ranks, it doesn’t much matter what Democrats do.
“This is a good woman who will do the right thing,” Dobson told his radio audience Wednesday, telling them that “the blood of those babies who will die will be on my hands” if he is wrong.
Even those conservatives who may be inclined, for their own reasons, to oppose the nomination – like Sens. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Trent Lott, R-Miss. – say they’ll wait and see how Miers handles the confirmation process before announcing their decision.
In the end, much will ride on how Miers performs in the televised Judiciary Committee hearings. Roberts gave her a blueprint for success but also set a high standard.
If Miers bungles her appearance, she may give Bush’s critics the rope to hang her as unqualified, and a crony.
Even then, it would take a freakish collaboration of senators from the liberal and conservative fringes to join in opportunistic marriage and defeat her.
John Aloysius Farrell’s column appears each Sunday in Perspective. Comment at the Washington and the West blog (denverpostbloghouse. com/washington) or contact him at jfarrell@denverpost.com.
