Is Miers a ringer for religious right?
COMMENT Supreme Court nominee could vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade
When
George W. Bush introduced Harriet Miers to Americans as his latest Supreme Court nominee 10 days ago, he made no mention of the Texas lawyer’s evangelical Christian beliefs or her private views on abortion.
In fact, the President sounded downright perturbed when a reporter asked later whether the subject of women’s reproductive rights had ever been broached during the decade in which he had known Ms. Miers as a friend.
“Not to my recollection,” Mr. Bush responded without hesitation. “In my interviews with any judge, I never ask their personal opinion on the subject of abortion.”
Period. Full stop.
Except it now turns out the White House, if not Mr. Bush himself, had a pretty good inkling where Ms. Miers stands on the most incendiary issue in U.S. jurisprudence.
James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and arguably America’s most influential antiabortion leader, said yesterday he was briefed on Ms. Miers’ likely nomination by White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove a full two days before the President announced it on Oct. 3.
In that conversation — now potentially the subject of a U.S. Senate inquiry — Mr. Dobson said Mr. Rove reassured him of Ms. Miers’ Christian pro- life bona fides.
Ms. Miers worships at a “very conservative church, which is almost universally pro-life,” Mr. Rove said, adding she fought the American Bar Association “for a policy that would not be supportive of abortion” and “she had been a member of the Texas Right to Life” organization.
The details of Mr. Rove’s private conversation with Mr. Dobson — which the White House does not dispute — have added an explosive new dimension to the controversy raging around Ms. Miers’ nomination.
Already reeling from a wave of conservative outrage over the choice, Mr. Bush is being accused by Democrats of doing something he vowed never to do: apply a “litmus test” to Ms. Miers on the issue of abortion.
If a candidate’s religious or moral views were irrelevant to their qualifications for the Supreme Court, Democrats ask, why would the White House secretly vet Ms. Miers through a leading pro-life activist?
“People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers,” Mr. Bush said yesterday when pressed on the issue. “ They want to know Harriet Miers’ background … and part of Harriet Miers’ life is her religion.”
Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush’s press secretary, said discussions about the nominee’s faith were just part of an “outreach” campaign designed to help prominent conservatives get to know her.
“Harriet Miers is a person of faith. She recognizes, however, that a person’s religion or personal views have no role when it comes to making decisions as a judge,” he said.
But Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, said the White House was using coded language to assure skeptical conservatives Ms. Miers would vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the United States.
“ We don’t confirm justices of the Supreme Court on a wink and a nod,” Mr. Leahy said. “ And a litmus test is no less a litmus test by using whispers and signals.”
Long-time observers of the Bush administration have been astonished at how badly it has handled the Miers nomination, alienating Democrats and Republicans alike.
Twenty-seven of 55 Republican senators have publicly expressed reservations about Ms. Miers, astonishing considering the loyalty Mr. Bush commanded during his first term.
Conservative dissenters object to the fact she has never been a judge, lacks a record of accomplishment in constitutional law and has no clearly expressed philosophy on how to reshape the Supreme Court into a more conservative institution.
Many critics had hoped Mr. Bush would pick an obvious ally to justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the most reliably conservative votes on the court.
“ The Republican base really had their heart set on a Scalia or Thomas. Instead, conservatives got a blank slate, a tabula rasa,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
“ They wanted an intellectual leader on the court for the right. At best, they got a vote for conservative positions. And they don’t even know whether they got that.”
Most stinging for Mr. Bush have been the allegations of cronyism by Republicans who say he ignored more qualified conservative jurists to pick a trusted member of his inner circle.
Ms. Miers worked as Mr. Bush’s personal lawyer and on his Texas gubernatorial campaigns before joining the White House staff in 2001.
According to documents released this week, she sent Mr. Bush a fawning birthday card in 1997 that described him as the best governor in Texas history.
“Dear Governor GWB, You are the best Governor ever — deserving of great respect!” it said.
In separate correspondence, Ms. Miers wrote Mr. Bush that his twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, must be lucky to have him and Laura as “cool” parents.
“She may turn out to be a conservative constitutional expert, but a lot of conservatives think she is where she is only because of her connections to the President,” said Trevor Parry- Giles, an expert on the Supreme Court nomination process at the University of Maryland.