Thursday, October 27, 2005

Miers Withdraws

I don't see what the problem was with her, other than inexperience. I wouldn't have personally been a fan of hers, but I do agree that when a president has the opportunity to choose a justice, he's probably going to choose one with a similar belief system to his. That's America. But wasn't it just a few years ago that the same people who were against her nomination were clamoring for "less lifetime judges" and "more non-judicial types" to "fix our Supreme Court"?

So it seems the Great Uniter has accomplished the impossible: Not only did he make the Dems and GOP more divided than ever before, but now it appears he has caused a fracture within the GOP itself.

Is the beginning of a long, hard row to hoe for the GOP? Many of the more moderate members of the party are pretty put off by the far right extremists who a) Bush panders to and b) think they are the mainstream, when they are the farthest thing from it.

I feel for sensible people like McCain and Spector and others like them, even for the Ray Lahood types who don't always follow the company line. What far-rights and far-lefts don't seem to grasp is that the other side is sometimes simply correct, and it's okay to take the opposing position once in a while.

And I'm beginning to think that Mr. Bush couldn't unite two pieces of bread to make a sandwich.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was listening to npr yesterday when they were talking about this. Almost every Senator said their problem with Miers was that there was no paper trail. Every one said that they had to know what they were going to vote on. With no paper trail they were going in blind. I found it interesting because both sides said that and both sides said that applies to both sides nominations. You got to have a paper trail.

Consultant said...

A paper trail is a two edged sword. Robert Bork had a trail as long as a country mile and you see what happened to him. We have to have some trail, but what length is the appropriate question. And for some candidates a long trail may be ok and others devastating.

Anonymous said...

I think consistency is more important the size of trail. One thing that hurt Miers was in one interveiw she was against abortion and then 4 years later she said it was the woman's choice.

Networkchic said...

Bush can't unite our nation now because we live in a nation where people claim they want to be united - but in reality we're all just to bitter. I've discovered, since moving from P-town up to the windy city, that it's not really about which side of the fence you vote, but which side of the fence is painted prettier.

BJ Stone said...

Why is it that we're all so bitter?

When did it start?

For my money, it started with the vicious, rabid dislike of Bill Clinton, who I personally thought did a heckuva job running the business that is our U.S. Government while he was in office. Many moderate to liberal people I know where just appalled that we had an impeachment hearing over something that every one of us has probably lied about - a sexual situation - in our lifetime.

It didn't help when the 2000 election was sliver close, and both parties sent scads of lawyers to Florida to battle it out in court, and one party in particular sent hordes of people to vote-counting stations to intimidate the officials.

Unless you think the division comes from something else, I'd put it starting with the unnecessary and idiotic, childish badgering of Clinton.

Anonymous said...

Bill Clinton should have been
indicted, and not over an e-mail, either, like Libby has been but rather for preparing a false
affidavit, having his lawyer introduce it into
evidence, testifying to its truthfulness and so forth.
He did all of that obstructing justice, multiple acts
of perjury, conspiracy and contempt. These were
premeditated. They were central to the sex harassment
case and Clinton never disputed them, even though he
could have in a hearing which he refused you. In this
case the underlying issue was whether Plame was
covert, whether she was outed, thereby endangering her
and national security. This Libby indictment doesn't
even deal with what this special counsel's
investigation was about. Robert Ray concluded Hillary Clinton lied
repeatedly about her role in the travel office
firings but he decided not to charge, even though he concluded she
lied under oath. Now that Hillary is going to run for her party's presidential nomination, all is well. Now, is
something wrong with this picture or what? And she did
conceal those Rose Law Firm billing records for two
years in the private residence of the White House and
didn't know how they got there. Libby didn't do any of
this.

Anonymous said...

I picture a movie or law and order with a few lawyers sitting around going over the facts and then they realize that Libby said this one day and this another day and this another day. Then they go, "this dude's lying to us". To me, that's how he probably got indicted.