Wow. Just when you thought it couldn't get worse for President Bush and the Republicans...it does! Today, Bush announced his nomnation of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, and the reaction has been scathing. The only problem for Bush is that the scathing reaction has been predominantly from CONSERVATIVES, not from liberals. Here's a sampling. William Kristol of the Weekly Standard: "I'M DISAPPOINTED, depressed and demoralized...What does this say about the next three years of the Bush administration--leaving aside for a moment the future of the Court? Surely this is a pick from weakness. Is the administration more broadly so weak?"
David Frum at National Review Online, a former Bush speechwriter: "The Miers nomination...is an unforced error. Unlike the Roberts's nomination, which confirmed the previous balance on the Court, the O'Connor resignation offered an opportunity to change the balance. This is the moment for which the conservative legal movement has been waiting for two decades...This is a chance that may never occur again: a decisive vacancy on the court, a conservative president, a 55-seat Republican majority, a large bench of brilliant and superbly credentialed conservative jurists ... and what has been done with the opportunity?
Public Advocate, a social conservative group based in Falls Church, Virginia: "The President's nomination of Miers is a betrayal of the conservative, pro-family voters whose support put Bush in the White House in both the 2000 and 2004 elections and who were promised Supreme Court appointments in the mold of Thomas and Scalia. Instead we were given "stealth nominees," who have never ruled on controversial issues, more in the mold of the disastrous choice of David Souter by this President's father."
"California Yankee" at Redstate.org: "President Bush has done himself a disservice in nominating White House counsel Harriet Miers to replace Justice O'Connor...I don't much about counsel Miers, but when there were so many outstanding candidates, this does smack of cronyism."
"Captain Ed" at Captain's Quarters: "Not only does Harriet Miers not look like the best candidate for the job, she doesn't even look like the best female candidate for the job...Miers may make a great stealth candidate, but right now she looks more like a political ploy. Color me disappointed in the first blush."
Betsy Newmark at Betsy's Page: "...this will be a big disappointment to many, many conservative supporters of the President. Compared to some of the names that have been mentioned, she is not of that caliber."
John Hawkins at Right Wing News: "George Bush's decision to appoint Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court is bitterly disappointing. Miers is a Bush crony with no real conservative credentials, who leapfrogged legions of more deserving judges just because she was Bush's pal. She used to be Bush's staff secretary for God's sake and now she's going to the Supreme Court while people like Michael Luttig, Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown & Emilio Garza are being left on the sidelines. "
Erick Erickson of the conservative Georgiz blog, "Confessions of a Political Junkies": "...from where we sit now, this is a profoundly disappointing nomination, a missed opportunity, and an abdication of responsibility to make sound, well qualified nominations. Whether it is also a betrayal of first principles is still to be determined."
Ouch.
Meanwhile, Senator George Allen (R-VA) was "non-committal" on the nomination, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. And close Kilgore ally Chad Dotson, Commonwealth's Attorney in Wise County, says "what I have seen so far [of Miers] makes me sick to my stomach."
Finally, let's go back to Erick Erickson of Georgia for a quote that could just as easily apply to Jerry Kilgore as to Jerry's role model, George W. Bush. Erickson says, "George W. Bush was the ultimate stealth nominee. He has acted like a true-blue conservative, talking the talk and walking the tax-cut walk. But he has expanded government, spent the future, and now nominated she who has the potential to be a female Souter."
Harsh.