Is the President sliding explosives under the Left's tangled defenses?
Mr.Atos
Defying all expectations, President Bush has nominated Harriet Miers to be his choice to fill O'Connor's seat on the US Supreme Court. After weeks of speculation, even months if you consider the Robert's deliberation on the heals of O'Connor's initial retirement announcement, all the pundits had narrowed the field to a short, firm list of probable nominees to be both celebrated and feared depending on your particular persuasion. Harriet Miers surprises everyone this morning, by having appeared on no such lists. There is guarded (feigned) optimism on the Left and dejected consternation on the Right.
Michelle Malkin regresents a good cross-section of underwhelmed emotion on the Right, even suggesting the administration itself to be stuck on stupid.
John H. at Powerline in disappointed.
Okieboy expresses a guarded position citing Reuter's overview of Miers and Hugh Hewitt's caution on the subject.
Hugh asks simply, do you trust him?... regarding Bush.
Because the overwhelming desire of some conservatives to be unhappy is best served by being a Cleveland fan. The stuff that the hand-wringers are scribbling should be collected in one long post for future review.I am no legal scholar to be sure. But, experience has taught me that patience is one of the cornerstones of wisdom. We may yet be encouraged to express anger and disappointment about the President's nomination in this case. But, other than being the first to pull the trigger, what is the reason to fire your musket into a fog?
The President has demonstrated himself to be a worthy adversary time and again, much to the humiliated chagrin of Liberals and Democrats. And it is no surprise that the Left has assembled a well-fortified defense of traps and snares along the front lines of judicial politics. The only remaining claim to power by the Left rests with the judiciary both in Federal Courts and especially SCOTUS. For the sake of survival and relevance, they will not yield that line without a bloody fight. And the Mainstream American Media is determined to suspend facts and truth in order to help their Liberal Allies, as the years of impass on judicial nominees has reciprocally demonstrated. The President's approach has always been long term progress; whether it be in an extended War on Terror and global fascism, or the outright reclamation of America. Bush advances his agenda yard by yard while the Left consistently crumbles.
But, SCOTUS is a battle unlike any political melee we have yet to see. A glimpse of the skirmish surrounding nominations has been revealed as with John Bolton. But, the onslaught over Senate rules regarding the filibuster is still pending. It will be long, hard and ugly with casualties on all sides... and long enduring scars on the body politic. Strategy will be required as with any battle to limit damage and casualties, and to gain the objective as quickly and effectively as possible. The first consideration in an advance of this nature is how to penetrate the fortified entanglements amassed at the beachhead by Congressional Democrats, the Mainstream Media, Leftwing Special Interests, and wayward Republicans. I submit, in this regard, Miers may be the second section of a Bangalore Torpedo ...
As described by Wikipedia,
The Bangalore was first devised by Captain McClintock, of the British Army Bengal, Bombay and Madras Sappers and Miners at Bangalore, India, in 1912. He invented it as a means of exploding booby traps and barricades left over from the Boer and Russo-Japanese Wars. The Bangalore would be exploded over a mine without the engineer having to approach it by more than about 10 feet (3 meters).
By the time of World War I the Bangalore was primarily used for clearing barbed wire. It was standardized to consist of a number of externally identical 5 foot (1.5 meter) lengths of threaded pipe, one of which contained the explosive charge. The pipes would be screwed together using connecting sleeves to make a longer pipe of the required length, and a smooth nose cone would be screwed on the end so as to not snag on the ground. It would then be pushed forward from a protected spot and detonated, and would clear a 5 foot (1.5 meter) wide hole through barbed wire.
The Bangalore was later adapted by the US Army as well during World War II, as the M1A1 Bangalore Torpedo. It was widely used by both the US and Commonwealth forces, notably during D-Day.
Roberts carried the first section of the torpedo directly into the fortifications, and even managed to gain a firm offensive position. Miers is taking the next section and pushing it further. She may or may not go all the way. And it may or may not be the complete objective. There could be more lengths to the torpedo carried behind by Brown, Jones, Owens, McConnel or Luttig. But, the intent of the President and his team may be to destroy as much of the defensive entanglement as possible in order to gain the actual objective firmly and decisively.
Much more could be gained by a smart relentless assault as with Normandy, than the suicidal folly of Gallipoli.
2 comments:
My first reaction was that this nomination was a direct challenge to the Democrats to try to defeat her by attacking her religion.
There's nothing else for them to aim at.
Then I thought maybe she was a throwaway.
But when I read all the snotty denunciations by people like George Will, I got mad, and I want her to be confirmed just to smack down the D.C. and New York conservatives who think Bush isn't presidential material because he stumbles over his words. They also seem to be blessed with the attention span of the hourly news cycle. They get bored with an administration that doesn't announce a new policy every week.
What offended me most was Will's statements that Miers is not one of the leading lights of American jurisprudence and that Bush has "neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution." Where's the list of "leading lights" so I can refer to it next time I need a lawyer. Then he writes: "Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Miers' nomination resulted from the president's careful consultation with people capable of such judgments. If 100 such people had been asked to list 100 individuals who have given evidence of the reflectiveness and excellence requisite in a justice, Miers' name probably would not have appeared in any of the 10,000 places on those lists."
Silly me! I thought we didn't elect federal judges!
Bush knows something that all 100 of those "people capable of such judgments" don't know. He knows about Harriet Miers, who, because she hasn't hung around Washington and New York and argued about politics and law with the folks at NRO and The Weekly Standard, these people never heard of. He knows that those people don't know every brilliant person in the country because a lot of them don't enjoy the preening and posing and name dropping.
I think I'd tell them next time to nominate their own person and see how many hearings the Senate gives him. I'm sick of these spoiled jerks who think that Bush wouldn't be president without their blessings. Apparently they are more like the MSM than they want us to believe.
Write on, AST!
Judgment! I know its been a while since we have seen any of it from American leadership. Partly, perhaps, because it is so despised by those who exist among consensus.
Good Comment! Keep'em coming.
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