criticism of miers is always framed around the issue of competence. trent lott says stuff like: "My questions have been: Is she qualified? Is she competent?" meanwhile
David Frum, a former White House speechwriter who has called her unqualified, said he was raising money to oppose her nomination.but what they really care about is not competence, but her likely votes on a particular issue:
Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican on the committee who has threatened to vote against Ms. Miers if he fears that she might uphold abortion rights, said the survey did not resolve his concerns. "It is a piece of evidence," Mr. Brownback said, adding that it is not as indicative of her legal views as a judicial opinion or a law review article might have been.and:
Gary Bauer, a prominent Christian conservative, complained of mixed signals about whether Ms. Miers might vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. "This debate is like riding on a yo-yo," Mr. Bauer said. "Will she or won't she? Only she knows for sure."the survey senator brownback was referring to is document miers filled out in 1989 for an organization called "Texans for Life." miers' answers indicated that she was in favor of a "human life amendment" to the u.s. constitution that would overturn roe v. wade. the bush administration released a copy of the survey yesterday to quash concerns about miers' competency to be a supreme court justice.
but her views on abortion really have nothing to do with the issue of competency. if bush appointed a retarded chimpanzee who was trained to automatically vote to overturn roe v. wade whenever it heard the word "abortion" during oral argument, the appointee would not be competent--i hope even gary bauer would acknowledge that. competency is a different issue than abortion.
that's not to say that there aren't people on both sides who think a candidates views on abortion are important in determining whether he or she should serve on the bench. there certainly are, and i'm even one of them. but that's not the same as the competency concerns that have been raised about harriet miers, a person with neither judicial experience nor any judicial scholarship to her name.
the conservative critics of the miers nomination don't want to acknowledge they are separate issues because: (1) it seems to devalue the importance of the abortion issue. if being anti-abortion isn't a matter of basic competence then it makes abortion seem to be less of a fundamental issue for them, and (2) for years conservatives have been on records as being against single issue litmus tests for judicial nominees. they took that line in the past to make questions about a nominee's specific views out-of-bounds. but now that they're the ones who have the questions, the anti-litmus rhetoric has fallen away. the way to avoid contradicting themselves on the litmus issue is to pretend they are not asking about abortion per se, but rather the broader issue of "competency."
it's funny that that's the route that they are taking, because, as it happens, i don't think miers is competent. angry conservatives are using competency as a ruse to ask about abortion, but the ruse itself has some teeth quite independently of the abortion issue. no matter what her views on abortion are, it's hard to imagine that she's really one of the best people for the job.
the bush administration knows where the critics in their base really stand and needs to address their concerns if this nomination is to survive. and so they fumble around, trying to answer the abortion issue, while pretending it's the competency issue. (e.g.) so far they've answer neither concern to the satisfaction of anyone who has their doubts about this nominee.
