Sunday, October 09, 2005

Pro Miers Commentators Hypocritical?

Could a pro-Harriet Miers pundit please explain their primary arguments a little further?

Argument #1. President has sole authority to make SCOTUS decisions so people should stop complaining.

I assume that those who advance the "Presidential Constitutional absolute authority" position with regard to the selection of Supreme Court nominees would apply this argument consistently? When a Democrat President nominates say, Laney Davis, it should go without saying that the people making this argument will support Davis? If not, should it even be a talking point?

Argument #2. President Bush's decision-making should be trusted because he has more information than we do (or whatever the reason for trusting is being proffered).

This is kind of a kissing cousin to argument #1 without the Constitutional technicalities to support it. To be less Socratic than the Laney Davis rhetoric, would the person offering this defense of HM have supported what many believed, was Bush's preferred first choice: AG Gonzales?

Furthermore, since there is no Constitutional prose that speaks to the "trust the president" argument, I assume that this is more of a general premise by which GOPers should look at all of Bush's decisions. If it applies to the SCOTUS nominees, does it not also apply to the President's rationale on immigration policy for example? Maybe this is a limited trust thing (based on his past court nominees)? This may be a valid argument but I have read several quality commentaries that demonstrate that GHWB and Reagan both made similarly high quality lower court picks before making poor quality higher court nominations.

#3. The "kooks" on the right were never elected president and they should just go away" argument.

I really don't understand this particular line of reasoning. It is especially ironic when it includes comments like "Coulter is a snob" as if this was a support for HM. Aside from the fact that her "snobbishness" is really is beside the point, is not a snob a person who chooses to only relate with a small group of select cronies and only take advice from said small insider cadre? In any case, are snobs now prohibited from having their comments on this nominee considered? Are the "kooks" like Krauthammer, Noonan, Ned Ryan, et. al. suddenly persona non grata ? Maybe I'm missing something but how does banning a snob (especially a brilliant one) from consideration make any logical sense?

Maybe there are more Pro-HM arguments that I am missing but these seem to be the primary ones I have run across and I am failing to see the internal consistency of the arguments.

To my mind, if these are your arguments then it appears you should:

a. never question a judicial nominee of either party.
b. trust all of Bush's future decisions.
b. cease consideration of the opinions of Krauthammer, Will, et. al. because you don't listen to "elitists", "whiners", and "kooks".

Honest attempts to set me straight on this would be appreciated.

1 Comments:

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10/25/05, 5:08 AM  

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