Powerline writer turns against Miers

After being a dogged defender of Harriet Miers’s nomination, “Paul” at Powerline (the contributors at Powerline don’t use their last names with their blog entries, so I’m just following their style) has shown increasing doubts in recent days. Today he officially became an opponent, on the basis of Miers’s 1993 speech I discussed earlier today. His conclusion about Miers’s politics is identical to mine:

I’ve found the time to read Miers’s speech carefully. This is not the speech of a centrist (the worst case plausible scenario, I thought); it’s the speech of a liberal. [Italics added.] The behavior of liberal Senate Democrats over recent years relieves conservative Republican Senators of any obligation to vote for the confirmation of nominees who take positions like the ones Miers sets forth in this speech (e.g., “abortion clinic protesters have become synonymous with terrorists” or, in the context of the abortion debate, “where science cannot determine the facts and decisions vary based upon religious belief, then government should not act”).

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.

As I’ve said, Paul has been a persistent and effective Bush loyalist and Miers supporter, tirelessly countering, like the good lawyer he probably is, every argument against her. For him now to judge her a “liberal” and call for her withdrawal or defeat suggests the degree to which President Bush in nominating her showed (choose one or more of the following) blind loyalty to a personal friend, callous indifference to conservative principle, or outright adherence to liberal principle. If Bush had withdrawn her nomination last week, he could have avoided this kind of devastating exposure of his nominee and of himself. The only question remaining is, how much more of this needless embarrassment will Bush choose to take?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 26, 2005 10:23 PM | Send