Gerry Daly at RedState: Opposing Miers Could Have Very Bad Consequences

He notes that Bush's disapproval rating is now in the range that has caused previous Presidents to lose House and Senate seats.

And that Republicans abandoning Bush could lead to defeats in 2006 and even 2008.

Something to think about. He echoes my worry: Bush has screwed up badly, but punishing him for his screw-up could lead to the Democrats taking over the War on Terror.

The Conference Call: Ken Mehlman arranged a conference call with conservative bloggers (no RNC love for Ace, as usual), and you can read about the call at PoliPundit, Ankle Biting Pundits, Professor Bainbridge (liveblogging the call), and Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters.

Digest: Mehlman seemed unable to answer questions asking for "concrete" evidence of Miers' constitutionalism; he urged people to wait until the hearings (apparently forgetting the script calls for Miers to say almost nothing at all); he urged people to trust Bush, as Bush knows how important this is; and he pointed out that Miers was involved in vetting and suggesting many of Bush's other picks for the federal courts, many of which are quite pleasing to conservatives.

Most on the conference call weren't particularly swayed.

Miers "Praised" The Federalist Societ in 2005 Speech?: Well, not quite. It's all soft-soap stuff, noting that they're important for bringing diverse voices to the debate on the Constitution and the like. Nothing that actually expressly endorses the Federalist Society's mission of bringing back the Constitution into Constitutional Law.

Frankly, if asked nicely enough and comped with free airfare and hotel, I could give the same sort of anodyne "diversity and debate is good" speech to the NAACP (while avoiding any actual endorsement of the group.)

Then again, I'm a whore.

This Isn't Going To Please Michael Update: Miers conservative on social questions and liberal on economic ones.

The glass is half empty.

And I don't know if someone's personal politics are necessarily a good indication of how they would rule as a judge. A judge, according to strict constructionalism/constitutionalism, isn't supposed to simply act as a superlegislator and enact their own laws according to their political preferences. They're supposed to determine if the Constitution actually speaks to a particular issue, and if so, what it says precisely (noting, but not being bound by, 200+ years of judicial interpretation).

I'm just as against a judge who would claim "The Constitution says abortion is illegal" as one who says "The Constitution says abortion is a guaranteed right."

I still have no evidence that Miers is anything other than an O'Connor, unbound by any judicial philosophy that would restrict her decisionmaking to clauses actually found in the Constiution, just deciding cases according to what she thinks is good, right, or just.

Now, I wouldn't mind conservative judicial activism as much as I mind liberal judicial activism, but both are bad, and both erode democracy itself by taking political questions from the people and reposing all power to decide them in the hands of nine unelected judgeds.

posted by Ace at 02:30 PM

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