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Miers Withdraws -- Did we win or lose? »

2005.10.27

Patterico's ledge is getting crowded

257 blogs against, 58 neutral,  52 for (per TTLB. Hat tip: Michelle.)

Paul Mirengoff:

Miers should withdraw. If she doesn't then, absent convincing evidence that her positions today are completely different from the liberal ones contained in the 1993 speech, the Senate should not confirm her.

Pejman Yousefzadeh:

And this is where I get off the bus. I don't want a Justice who is merely better than the mediocre. I want excellence. I want someone who lives and breathes the issues the Court grapples with and while Harriet Miers is an excellent lawyer, she does not fit the bill on this score.

That's two more people I respect greatly, who didn't just automatically oppose Miers from the beginning because she wasn't on their personal short lists. They've taken time to study the situation, looking for solid reasons to take one side or the other, and now they've made their decisions.

See Patterico's Pontifications and  Protein Wisdom for two more well-written posts on why Miers should do the country a favor and just go away quietly. I submit that neither Patterico nor Goldstein has much of a history as a herd animal.

Quote of the day, from Miers' 1993 speech to a professional women's group:

We undeniable still have a justice system that does not provide justice for all as provided by the Pledge of Allegiance. One justice for the rich, one justice for the poor. One justice sometimes for minorities, one for whites.

I ask you now, isn't that just exactly the sort of brilliant analytical thinking we need on the Supreme Court?

Update:

"Captain" Ed Morrissey:

I took what little time at work (on my lunch break) that I could to read through the speech given by Harriet Miers to the Executive Women of Dallas in 1993, and wound up re-reading three more times tonight. I would encourage everyone to read this speech carefully, as it sheds quite a bit of light onto the skills and outlook of the nominee selected by George Bush.

It's quite unsettling.

The first quality that comes across when I read this speech is its mediocrity. I assume Miers wrote it herself, because no one would pay for something written this poorly, just on a mechanical level. It's full of incomplete sentences, poor grammar, conjugation errors, and the like. I understand that this isn't an essay for print, but it is a speech that was written in a format for verbatim delivery.

[...]

I'm off the fence for good now. I oppose the Miers nomination.

Update 2:

Mark Tapscott:

I've purposely kept silent on the issue since my initial observation that weak Senate GOP leadership leaves Bush only two choices. a perfect nominee (Roberts) or an untrackable nominee (Miers).

Now I realize the second choice is actually illusory because the absence of a concrete record in previous decisions as a judge or in published articles makes it inevitable that other material like speeches, media interviews and correspondence will become the governing evidence. Bush put himself on what could only become a fool's errand when he nominated Miers, whatever the reason in his heart that led to the decision.

For these reasons, I see no alternative to the conclusion that the Miers nomination should be withdrawn. Let us all now pray for a wiser second choice because the nation needs it.

Posted by Bill Faith on October 27, 2005 at 12:13 AM | Permalink

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Bill Faith, I read Ms. Miers' 1993 speech tonight. I also read the reactions of various bloggers, such as Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom, and Paul Mirengoff of Powerline. I had a very different reaction from theirs and yours. I have been leaning towards supporting Ms. Miers, but I wasn't quite ready to get down off the fence. But the 1993 speech, and the reaction to it, has pushed me off: I am now squarely behind Ms. Miers. I have suspected for a while that many otherwise very intelligent folks were giving Ms. Miers the bum rush. But now I am convinced of it. I liked Ms. Miers's speech. It was a little clunky in spots, but overall it was a strong speech given the venue: a civic group of woman executives. It certainly was not the disaster that many are making it out to be. I like her commitment to the rights of the underprivileged, and I like the way she castigates legislators for punting controversial issues over to the courts. She comes across as a stand-up person, which is something I have been curious to know more about. In short, I think too many conservative/Republican pundits/bloggers have been chomping at the bit to react negatively and put Ms. Miers down. I feel I need to make a stand against that now.

Posted by: Matthew Goggins | Oct 27, 2005 1:57:31 AM

Not that it matters now, but I'd like you to think about something and then email me privately. Who wrote the 1993 speech? Was it Miers? Or was it someone in the audience, trying to "transcribe" on the fly? Miers was an officer on the National Honor Society in her high school An honor graduate in mathematics as an undergraduate at SMU. Voted a member of the Mortar Board honorary society. The top female student in her law school class. The editor of the law review. Doesn't the "fact" that she can't write, spell or use correct grammar seem just a little more than odd to you? Is there not even the possibility that this "speech" was written by someone else contemporaneously, as she spoke? And if you read the speech, what was your reaction to the conclusion? "Where science determines the facts, the law can effectively govern. However, when science cannot determine the facts and decisions vary based upon religious belief, then government should not act." Again, not that it matters. Miers was guttted, drawn and quartered before she even had a chance to take a breath, much less defend herself.

Posted by: antimedia | Oct 27, 2005 3:46:27 PM

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