Last week on his radio show, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson tantalized listeners by saying he’d talked with President Bush’s deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, regarding Harriet Miers. He didn’t reveal the substance of the conversation, but Dobson said it convinced him to support Miers’ nomination to the Supreme Court.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will need to know more about the phone calls. Dobson and Rove should both be called to testify at Miers’ confirmation hearings.
Dobson is the most prominent evangelical voice to support Miers. Many others are upset with Bush for nominating a candidate with no track record in opposition to Roe vs. Wade, the court’s 1973 expression of abortion rights.
“When you know some of the things that I know that I probably shouldn’t know – that would take me in this direction – you would understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, that I believe Harriet Miers will be a good justice,” Dobson said on the air in a tortured endorsement.
That remark has fueled suspicions that Rove assured Dobson that Miers – currently White House counsel – would vote to overturn Roe. The president has said he doesn’t know where Miers stands on the issue, but surely if Rove is offering assurances to a staunch anti-abortion advocate such as Dobson, the suggestion is obvious.
“Frankly, for anyone, either her or her handlers, to signal that would be completely inappropriate,” said David Fine, a Denver constitutional lawyer, with the caveat that “it’s not entirely clear to me that’s exactly what she did.”
Rove is appearing before a federal grand jury this week regarding the administration leak that blew the cover of a CIA agent. Surely he doesn’t relish this additional scrutiny, but it’s inevitable.
Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said, “I want to know what all the facts are … If Dr. Dobson knows something that he shouldn’t know or something that I ought to know, I’m going to find out.” Across the aisle, Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said, “If those assurances are good enough for James Dobson, then all of America ought to hear them.”
Miers apparently isn’t rabid enough for conservatives who want both a reliable vote on Roe and an activist bearing on other social issues. The president said he hasn’t applied any litmus test in selecting Miers; even if that’s the case, it doesn’t mean Miers didn’t tip her hand to Rove or others involved in the nomination process.
If they, in turn, made any promises to Dobson about Miers’ intentions, her nomination will be doomed. Dobson says he cast his lot with Miers based on something he knows that he probably shouldn’t know. Surely the Senate will ease Dobson of the lonely burden of such inside information.
