some people i work with are less amused. they are convinced that the apparent infighting is a ruse to stop the democrats from attacking the nominee. agi t. prop guest posting at chez matt has also floated the same idea, calling it a right wing fake out of faux rage.
i don't buy it. the theory, i mean. i think the rage is real and that agi and my coworkers are wrong.
first, for faux rage the right wing attacks on miers are remarkably effective. george will, for example, does not seem to be pulling any punches here. and polls show the american are less excited about this nomination than they were roberts, with a large number of people undecided. if the strategy is to get miers confirmed, discrediting her in the eyes of the american public is a very unusual way to do it.
second, the right has nothing to fear from the democratic party. there's really no reason to fake out anyone here. the democrats have been completely ineffective at stopping any bush nominees so far. there was no reason to think they would suddenly grow some teeth for this one. why come up with a convoluted fake-out, with all the risks that entails, when a more straightforward strategy has brought nothing but success?
third, it hasn't faked out the liberal advocacy groups. they're still working hard to rally the anti-miers troops, my email junk mail folder is a testament to their efforts. the reason they seem to be absent is because the critics on the right are getting more coverage. i don't think the disproportionate coverage of right-wing critics is any grand media conspiracy either. the story about moveon.org's opposition to a bush nominee has already been told many times over. it's more sexy and original to write stories about bush's own allies turning against him. it's inevitable that the media would play up that angle, but it doesn't mean that liberals everywhere have fallen silent.
fourth, this is not helping the conservative cause at all. without conservative opposition, miers would probably be confirmed. that's just political reality. there's nothing to gain here at all for the right.
here's what i think is going on; it's really three things. the right wing of the party (1) does not want another souter, (2) have been putting up with things in the bush agenda that they are less excited about in return for the assurance that bush would at least advance their project of reforming the courts, and (3) they feel bush owes them big time for his narrow victory in last year's election. given those three things, their reaction makes perfect sense. look at this excerpt from a washington post article from last july, months before the miers' nomination was announced:
The first goal of the conservatives' newfound organizational power is to pressure Bush to nominate an ideologically acceptable judicial candidate. Perkins said Bush "has committed to nominate justices like Scalia and Thomas." Rush Limbaugh, in his radio broadcast, warned that there "is no longer any room" for a "stealth" nominee without a proven conservative record.conspiracy theories are attractive because they help us make sense of the world. for the past six years liberals have been awed by the effectiveness of the republican machine. we have ascribed superhuman powers of insight and control to people like karl rove. but it's not true. it never was true. the grass is greener when you're outside looking in. the republican party looked like a well-oiled political machine from the outside. but it was really just a haphazard contraption of different interests, slapped together in a marriage of convenience. i.e. not all that different from the coalition that makes up the democratic party, only a little more effective at sweeping their differences under the carpet.
Bush said during the 2004 presidential campaign that he admires justices such as Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- a statement that prompts Shannen W. Coffin, a former official in Bush's Justice Department, to say "there's no doubt the president made a promise" to nominate like-minded judges.
at least they were for a little while. maybe not anymore. i hope not anymore. and that's what makes this miers thing most entertaining of all.
