The Myth of Denying Miers a Vote

There's a myth being circulated by Miers supporters, and especially by Hugh Hewitt, that I think needs to be shot down. That myth, as expressed in his New York Times piece, is that the Miers critics denied her an up-or-down vote in the Senate, something which conservatives have demanded of Democrats in the last several elections. Hugh expresses it this way:

OVER the last two elections, the Republican Party regained control of the United States Senate by electing new senators in Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas. These victories were attributable in large measure to the central demand made by Republican candidates, and heard and embraced by voters, that President Bush's nominees deserved an up-or-down decision on the floor of the Senate. Now, with the withdrawal of Harriet Miers under an instant, fierce and sometimes false assault from conservative pundits and activists, it will be difficult for Republican candidates to continue to make this winning argument: that Democrats have deeply damaged the integrity of the advice and consent process.

I like Hugh, and I had a chance to meet him at the recent GodBlogCon, but I'm always going to be wary of any Republican who shows up on the pages of the NY Times since it's a general rule that the Times is not interested in conservative opinion unless it criticizes other conservatives. Putting that aside, however, the notion that Miers critics resorted to Dem tactics is not completely accurate.

Criticism from the right cannot be confused with the obstructionist parlimentary tactics of the left (although Hugh has pretty much done that). There's absolutely nothing that Charles Krauthammer, Laura Ingraham, David Frum, George Will, the entire gang at The Corner, or me for that matter, could have done to deny Miers an up-or-down vote. Only Miers and the president had they power in the early stage of the nomination process, and they are the ones who exercised it. If it was an up-or-down vote that she and the president wanted, all she had to do was stay in the game. A vote would have been guaranteed since no filibuster was likely. It would have been a terrible mistake, but there was nothing preventing them from continuing.

I will grant that some of the Miers critics went way overboard by buying radio and TV ads and the such, but I don't understand at what point criticism of an unworthy candidate became a prohibited activity? I'm not going to blindly rally around any political leader if I think they've made a bad mistake, and as I stated previously, it's possible to be a strong Constitutionalist and still desire that a nominee withdraw before the hearings begin. The president just may have saved his second term by pulling back on this one.

Let's hope the next nominee is someone that won't be endorsed by Harry Reid, and that the only ones fighting the president will be the Dems.


Harriet Miers; Miers; SCOTUS; Miers Withdraws; Supreme Court