California Conservative

According to the Washington Times’ Ralph Hallow and Charles Hurt, there are signs that that’s exactly what’s happening behind the scenes. Here’s the basis for their reporting:

The White House has begun making contingency plans for the withdrawal of Harriet Miers as President Bush’s choice to fill a seat on the Supreme Court, conservative sources said yesterday. “White House senior staff are starting to ask outside people, saying, ‘We’re not discussing pulling out her nomination, but if we were to, do you have any advice as to how we should do it?’ ” a conservative Republican with ties to the White House told The Washington Times.
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But the conservative political consultant said that he had received such a query from Sara Taylor, director of the Office of White House Political Affairs. Miss Taylor denied making any such calls. A second Republican, who is the leader of a conservative interest group and has ties to the White House, confirmed that calls are being made to a select group of conservative activists who are not employed by the government. “The political people in the White House are very worried about how she will do in the hearings,” the second conservative leader said. “I think they have finally awakened.”

It sounds like this train’s engines are running and that it’s just a matter of time before it pulls out of the station. It appears that the tipping point, in terms of the White House’s attitude on this, was the Judiciary Committee’s reaction to her answers to the questionnaire. When Sens. Leahy and Specter announced that they didn’t like her answers, the White House retreated, saying that Miers would supply additional information if they requested it.

I suspect that the White House started making their behind-the-scenes calls after disapproval of Miers’ answers to the questionnaire spread on Capitol Hill.

This is sure to be seen as a setback to the White House but it might be a positive in the longterm. If her nomination is withdrawn, it’s very possible that he’ll pick a more known quantity that conservatives will go to war with. My personal choice in that instance remains J. Michael Luttig but if the President chooses to nominate a woman, I hope it’s Priscilla Owen or Edith Hollan Jones. I don’t see much chance of him nominating Janice Rogers-Brown but I might be wrong. I didn’t see the Miers nomination coming either.

“So there are some in the White House and some Republicans in the Senate who are worried the Democrats can now build a case that she is not competent enough or knowledgeable enough to be a justice on the Supreme Court,” he said. “Really, that is the most damaging case you can build against a nominee.” The reason, he said, is that “non-ideologues would be responsive to that competence argument, and Republicans won’t be able to argue that her defeat was ideological, that the reason the Democrats beat her was that she was too conservative.”

That perception would be damaging to President Bush because he’d prefer having the ability to attack Democrats by saing that they’re just being over-the-top partisans. That clearly can’t work in this instance.

Based on Mssrs. Hallow’s and Hurt’s reporting, I’d start preparing for who might be the next nominee.

Cross-posted at ConfirmationWhoppers

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 22nd, 2005 at 8:24 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Judiciary, Law, W, Washington, DC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.