This especially.
"I'm disappointed because I expected President Bush to nominate someone with a visible and distinguished constitutionalist track record--someone like Maura Corrigan, Alice Batchelder, Edith Jones, Priscilla Owen, or Janice Rogers Brown--to say nothing of Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell, or Samuel Alito. Harriet Miers has an impressive record as a corporate attorney and Bush administration official. She has no constitutionalist credentials that I know of."
William Kristol, Weekly Standard
"It is not important that she [Harriet Miers] 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, Washington Post
"Handed a once-in-a-generation opportunity to return the Supreme Court to constitutionalism, George W. Bush passed over a dozen of the finest jurists of his day -- to name his personal lawyer."
Pat Buchanan, Syndicated Columnist
"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, Washington Post
"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."
Judge Robert Bork, former Supreme Court nominee
"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, Third Branch Conference
"For nearly 25 years, conservative legal thinkers have been building an argument that liberalism transformed the Court into an instrument of national policymaking more appropriate to the nation's legislative institutions. Roe v. Wade is the most famous of those policy decisions. And the most famous dictum justifying judicial policy innovation is Justice William Douglas's "penumbras formed by emanations" -- from Griswold v. Connecticut. Across these many years, conservatives have been creating a structured legal edifice to stand against a liberal trend toward aggrandized federal power that began in the 1930s. Chief Justice William Rehnquist's "New Federalism," which devolves many powers back to the states, was one such example. Harriet Miers may share these reformist views, but her contribution to them is zero. Conservatives are upset because they see this choice as frittering away an opportunity of long-term consequence."
Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal
"From now on, this administration will find it difficult to muster support on the right without explaining why it should be forthcoming. The days of the blank check have ended because no thinking conservative really wants to be part of a team that requires marching in lock step without question or thought, even if it is headed by the president of the United States."
David Keene, American Conservative Union
"The official White House line is that she was chosen because she was the very best person available. Asked if she was 'the most qualified to serve on the Supreme Court,' Bush replied with charming circularity, 'Yes. Otherwise I wouldn't have put her on.' The amazing thing is not that he could make such a claim, but that he could make it without laughing out loud."
Steve Chapmann, Syndicated Columnist
"Bush needs to keep the [Republican] party's conservative base aggressively in his corner. He also needs to show that, notwithstanding his mostly-superficial second term problems, he can get what he wants from the Senate when the chips are down. He had the opportunity to do that with another top-notch nomination, and he had great candidates available. Instead, it is widely perceived that he punted."
John Hinderaker, Power Line Blog
"There have just been too many instances of seeming conservatives being sent to the high Court, only to succumb to the prevailing vapors up there: O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter. Given that record, it is simply reckless for any conservative president to take a hazard on anything other than a known quantity of the highest intellectual and personal excellence."
David Frum, National Review Online
"This is what the whole 2004 election was about. As one of them noted to me, for the president to nominate somebody who would be a legislator instead of a judge would be the equivalent of what his dad did in breaking his ‘no new taxes’ promise in 1990. That is how central this issue was in the last election. ... People know who went door-to-door in Ohio for the president and who won Iowa for the first time in 20 years. It was predominantly social conservatives and people who are deeply concerned about the direction the Supreme Court is taking the country."
Senator Sam Brownback, R - Kansas
"There is a big difference between a political conservative and a judicial conservative. If she [Harriet Miers] doesn't have a deep-governing judicial philosophy, she will get sucked into this whole system that puts pressure on members of the Supreme Court."
Paul Weyrich, Free Congress Foundation
"There are a lot more people -- men, women and minorities -- that are more qualified in my opinion by their experience than she is."
Senator Trent Lott, R-Mississippi
"However nice, helpful, prompt and tidy she is, Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on "The West Wing," let alone to be a real one. Both Republicans and Democrats should be alarmed that Bush seems to believe his power to appoint judges is absolute. This is what "advice and consent" means."
Ann Coulter, Syndicated Columnist
"If an individual goes his or her whole life without writing or speaking about the horrid court decisions -- abortion-on-demand, same-sex "marriage," removal of public displays of the Ten Commandments -- why would they suddenly find their voice when they get on the Supreme Court?"
Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families
"The president would have been politically better served by what Pat Buchanan called a bench-clearing brawl. A fractious and sparring base would have come together arm in arm to fight for something all believe in: the beginning of the end of command-and-control liberalism on the U.S. Supreme Court."
Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal
“I have a concern that Miss Miers was helping to legitimize the drive of homosexual organizations for power and influence over our public policies [when running for Dallas City Council in 1989]."
Tony Perkins, Family Research Council
In the past, conservatives had overlooked disappointments and disagreements for the sake of getting solid appointments to the Supreme Court. The president's judicial appointments will be among his most lasting legacies. But then Mr. Bush nominated Ms. Miers. Conservatives are not sure she's a legal conservative at all, and they are still less sure that she will be a forceful advocate for originalism. Not even her strongest defenders outside the administration say she would have been their top choice.
Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review
Please, sir, would you not agree that judges should be critical thinkers; capable of objectively looking at different sides of often-complex issues; and then reaching a correct decision based on a sound and consistent judicial philosophy and temperament? Do these qualities not perfectly describe Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, two current Supreme Court justices you have said you admire? Were these not among your stated reasons for nominating Chief Justice John Roberts to that post? Please then, Mr. President, pull this nomination and give us a truly qualified nominee. We won't even demand that you admit you made a mistake.
Bob Barr, former U.S. attorney and congressman |
