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October 14, 2005
If You Don't Trust Him To Choose, Why Did You Vote For Him?
I'm beginning to wonder why the political conservatives voted for Bush. I assumed at the time that it had something to do with believing that he would be able to pick better players for the Cabinet and the Court than his opponents (Al Gore and John Kerry, lest we forget.)
At least, that's what they claimed in the Novembers of 2000 and 2004. In this last election, as in no other, the Court was thought to be vitally important.
In religious right circles, at the grass roots level, there was high excitement that the nation might finally get some Justices in who would roll back the tides of misplaced internationalism, judicial invention, and Supreme legislation that have proven so vexing to those in the heartland trying to raise decent families in an unholy world. Because President Bush is a man of sincere faith, whereas John Kerry was clearly a man of pure opportunism and personal religious hypocrisy ("I believe life begins at conception" did not ring true from a pro-choice politician), prayerful people whose participation in politics is normally limited to election day came out in force to actually work for candidates. Phone banks were filled, neighborhoods were walked, parties were held, and registration drives were pursued by massive numbers of people otherwise uninterested in the process.
All this optimism was based not on who would be the likely nominees, but on who would be the one to pick such nominees--a man whose heart they trusted, George W. Bush.
This, they knew, was the turning point. The president had proven his destiny as Commander-in-Chief by being in position for September 11, and it was now time for God's man or woman (or men or women, or some combination thereof) to take the bench. Prophetic words were given, prayers were sent up, intercessors fasted, and God's people waited to see how long the Lord would wait before shifting the composition of the Court.
They didn't have to wait long. When O'Connor said she wanted to leave, there was much rejoicing (although it was rather irritating to them to see their politically conservative brethren in positions of power lionizing a woman they thought of as an unholy disaster on the bench; still, they accepted it as mere civility, however insincere.) When Roberts was nominated, they embraced him as a strict constructionist who could be trusted to stay that way.
When Justice Rehnquist unexpectedly breathed his last, again there was great anticipation that not one but two justices could be fielded in this term. Despite calls from his allies to promote Scalia or Thomas, or to nominate one of the deep benchers he'd won in hard-fought battles with Congress, the president again confounded pundits by elevating the prior nomination to Chief and looking for a new O'Connor replacement. The Roberts nomination sailed through with little controversy (except the usual gang of idiots from the pro-choice hysteria crowd, Ralph Neas, and a few snotty professors who wouldn't have liked anyone less liberal than Hillary Clinton.) And there was much rejoicing.
Then, as they continued to pray for the president to have the mind of Christ as he prayerfully chose the right person for this season of American jurisprudence--a time when myriad hot-button issues of Christianity and culture are in play as never before--the president woke them up on the first Monday morning in October with his friend, Harriet Miers, by his side.
Now, don't get me wrong. Most Christian conservatives--like most Americans--don't know much about potential court nominees. They've heard the names of judges the Democrats filibustered, and that's about it. As was the case with John Roberts, most ordinary people on the religious right didn't know who she was, since who the White House Counsel is does not generally show up as a prayer concern to any but those immediately involved. What they knew about John Roberts was that the President admired him and he seemed to be a good man, a good father, a Constitutionalist instead of an activist, and the choice of the President for Chief Justice. The religious conservatives, with no particular knowledge of Roberts, immediately got on board. Why? Because they trusted the man who nominated him.
Although Roberts wasn't on the conservative intelligentsia's wish list, the usual gang of conservative pundits quickly found out enough to satisfy them that the non-selection of Edith Jones or Janice Rogers Brown or Michael Luttig hadn't shafted them. (Though Ann Coulter didn't like him, anyway.) Besides, the Democrats were acting like babies already. All the players were on the sides one expected; all was right with the world.
But Miers is a different situation altogether. Conservatives have occasionally wondered who this president really is. Spiritual conservatives wondered if he could be trusted to do the right thing in the face of long odds, or if he would prove to be merely a consummate politician playing the evangelical card to his political advantage. Economic conservatives have worried that he would some day risk conservative political gains for some deep and unknowable spiritual conviction.
Now we know.
Christian conservatives should no longer doubt this president's sincerity. He has made a selection based on a conviction that flies in the face of pragmatic politics, and he is not backing down. He is risking everything to bring in a nominee that he himself believes is the best available choice, despite the objections of politically-minded conservatives and the opposition of those he considers his allies.
The Miers nomination is the Category 5 hurricane that breaks open the levees of conservatism, exposing its deepest divide: that between those who are conservative primarily for intellectual reasons, and those whose conservatism is a habit of the heart. The president has declared his loyalty; he is, above and beyond his economic theories and his powerful defense of the free market, a True Believer.
These disagreements have arisen from time to time, in the divide between the social conservatives longing for more true believers in the Reagan White House and the political pragmatists urging them to be patient; in the rift between the George H.W. Bush New World Order acolytes and the cultural conservationists on Pat Robertson's team; in the tug of war between hard-line fiscal conservatives and open-handed compassionate conservatives willing to spend a little money to prod the resistant into participating in Bush's visionary "ownership society."
Between the two, there are differing definitions and applications of "trust." It might be said that both subscribe to Reagan's sage advice on the Soviet Union, "Trust, but verify,"--but one group considers the trust primary, and the other tends to suspend trust in the hunt for verification.
For Christian conservatives (and I stress here that these are not the people most usually connected to the poltical aspect of the religious right question, but those who view politics as an expression of faith), one's primary (and only absolute) trust belongs to Christ. In this case, they trust Bush because they believe he trusts Christ, as he has consistently maintained since he first lit their political fires by publicly proclaiming his favorite political philosopher to be "Christ, because he changed my heart." Moreover, they trust him more than they do the "verification" conservatives, whom they suspect of harboring less than noble and forgiving feelings toward others, such as liberals.
It is important to a purpose-driven Christian to seek a Biblical response to matters of culture, and to follow that response regardless of its pragmatic consequences. Despite the deaths of 45 million babies as a result of the Roe decision, they are called to forgive all those involved and to seek to change the situation through prayer and repentence, rather than anger and action. Where they have no knowledge, they seek advice from people they trust who do. Quite bluntly, they trust Dobson and Warren more than they do Limbaugh and Coulter. And because Dobson and Warren trust Bush on this, they are more inclined to do so.
For the verification conservatives, stepping out in faith on Bush is a difficult thing because they can't find out enough to assure them their trust is well placed. They don't have the same sense of divine appointment about Bush that non-political conservatives have; they are wedded to this world, and in this world, one is supposed to have certain qualifications and be known to the jury of conservative court-watchers. Ironically, this woman who helped judge those who would be judges as a member of the President's nominating team managed to keep herself unknown to the pundits and pontificators who so praised the results of her coaching. Thus, to them, she does not exist, despite the fact that the president and his nominees relied in part on her to navigate the process in the past.
The conservative intelligentsia sees the President's membership in the social conservative club overshadowing their power to control the dissemination of conservative information, and they are having none of it. They can't accept the notion that the President of the United States might have access to better information concerning Court nominees than they have. They can't handle the idea that when he said "I will nominate candidates to the Supreme Court," he really meant "I" and not "my friends in the conservative think tanks." They can't stand it that, after all this time in the wilderness, they might still be "out of the loop" when it comes to the important questions of the presidency--especially when they find out that a doltish nobody like James Dobson actually had a seat in the "kitchen cabinet" this time around. It wasn't the judicial conservative elite invited to that conference call--it was the evangelicals. And that smarts.
The conservatives who are crying the loudest--and with a venom and a bitterness usually reserved for Ted Kennedy or illegal immigration--do more than anyone else to convince those who trust Dobson and Falwell and Robertson and D. James Kennedy and Marvin Olasky and Dick Cheney and President Bush that the president, leading with his heart, is right on this. There seems to be more than a little "it's not FAIR" in their whining and braying. Though they were in no way owed a consultation, the fact that they did not get one appears to have driven conservative think-tank mavens into paroxyms of rage.
Tsk, tsk. That's no kind of witness for the world.
The President's calm and Miss Miers' quietness are evidence to the Christian conservative right that both are walking in the will of God. They are clearly at peace, even in the midst of the deafening cacophony of conservative pundits demanding answers, withdrawal, or apologies.
The President is the President. He nominates, and the Senate advises and consents. Conservative think-tanks are welcome to give their opinions--but they are opinions, and the President isn't required to follow any of them. Miss Miers is the nominee, and her job will be to present herself honestly before the Senate to be intellectually weighed and measured, to be poked and prodded by reprobates like Ted Kennedy and intellectual gnats like Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer. You can bet (if you do that sort of thing) she'll be prayed up and ready, and we'll see how she does.
For Miers' prayer warriors and armor bearers--Chuck Colson, James Dobson, Rick Warren, and the multiple millions of people who give their testimony great weight and respect--who is on the Court is a matter so monumentally important and far-reaching that it is more important that God be pleased than that they look smart. They don't care if it's someone they've never heard of. God is a master at picking people out of a crowd that no one's ever heard of before. President Bush has a history of going against the grain of popular wisdom, even popular conservative wisdom. He has a tendency to pluck people unexpectedly out of their comfort zone--like John Roberts--and watch them perform with excellence.
This is a "purpose-driven" president, and he has picked a "purpose-driven" nominee, which may be why Rick Warren is so enthusiastically supporting her. When you elected the President, you granted him certain forms of authority. One of those is the right to pick nominees for the Supreme Court. There's nothing in the Constitution that reserves that power to the people. The President is popularly elected, and that election is the end of the people's say in the matter of the Court. The Senate (again, I stress, originally a body of deliberative legislators picked by the states, not elected by the people) has no obligation to even include the people in their advising process. In fact, if they wanted to, they could do it all by email, I suppose. They choose to have hearings, to let witnesses testify, and to take input from their constituents. But they have no obligation to use any of that input in their decision-making. That's how the system works.
Rick Warren is fond of saying, "Remember: God is God, and you're not." The conservatives angry that the president actually had the nerve to exercise the authority they gave him to bring up a nominee that will do what they want her to do would do well to remember that President Bush is President, and they're not.
There is no warranty on the presidency. If he's not what you wanted, it's too late to take it back. If you want someone to follow the conservative party line instead of putting his or her own judgment into play, elect Ann Coulter next time. After all, she's at least as qualified as Hillary, isn't she?
Posted by Kerry at October 14, 2005 04:00 PM
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-->Comments
>>IF YOU DON'T TRUST HIM TO CHOOSE, WHY DID YOU VOTE FOR HIM?
People vote Bush because they are morons.
Posted by Um Yeah ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.pardonmyenglish.com//nav-commenters.gif)
at October 14, 2005 07:19 PM
People voted for Bush because they are ignorant fools that beleive everything they see on Fox news, and everything that Rush Limbaugh says. Now that half the Republican party is either under indictment or under investigation, the whole "moral values" stance seems a little silly doesnt it? Rove, Plame, Frist, Delay, Fraud, Conspiracy, Money Laundering, Insider Trading, WMD, Downing Street Memo, Aluminum tubes, Mobile Bio Weapons Labs, Saddam/Al Quaida Connection, Lies, Lies, and more LIES, and thats just the stuff we know about!!!
Posted by neocon666 at October 14, 2005 08:32 PM
1) Would you say something as silly as 'If you think Nixon is the kind of man that would cover up a break in, why did you vote for him?'.
Voting is an act of desperation. At the end of the day you can only hope the man will do what he claimed he will do, and if he doesn't, you need to do whatever you can to make him understand his actions are intolerable. Else we'd simply end up an aristocracy. This is partly due to point number two.
2) What, exactly, where my options again? John 'Christmas in Cambodia' Kerry?
Kerry, I can either kick you in the ass or kick you in the shin. If you pick shin, a week later when I'm in court, I'm going to say 'Come on! She WANTED me to kick her in the shin! She chose it!'
By the way, if you pick the ass, I'm going to make the same argument.
Again, I refer to the great communicator, Ronald Reagan.
"I ask you not simply to "Trust me," but to trust your values--our values--and to hold me responsible for living up to them."
I'm not a 'republican', not primarily, not ever. I'm a 'conservative'. My trust goes not to the man but to the ideas and ideals he espouses and claims to represent.
If he fails to uphold him, I intend to hold him accountable.
When you put your faith in the man himself, instead of principles that drive him, you both encourage his folly and become blind to it when it occurs.
Save you faith for God. From politicians, demand proof.
Posted by MJohnson at October 14, 2005 08:46 PM
MJ, how old are you?
You guys, the corporate whore Republicans (im making a generalisation here) made a deal.
The Fundies give you there votes and sell out their own futures to get them what they want. Namely Talibangilism.
They want their due.
Posted by Um Yeah at October 14, 2005 09:00 PM
By the way...
All this talk about what the role of the Senate in the nomination is, about how the 'President has the right!' (I never bought that any way. I disagree. Allways have, even with Roberts). What can the senate vote a nominee down based upon, if it's not just a rubber stamp?
Well, whatever you do, don't ask any of the guys who wrote the clause....Like Alexander Hamilton.
"To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity... He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than ... being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure."
If your curious what we can expect from her once on the bench, you know, if she decides not to be an obsequious instrument of Bush's pleasure, take a look at her scholarly writings.
Posted by MJohnson at October 14, 2005 09:08 PM
I think its important for conservatives to understand that GWB has several associations and loyalties. One is to Christian values. Another loyalty is to his class, the people he grew up with and who have surrounded him as his friends and colleuges, classmates and mentors, all his life. These are the elite super-rich. These are the folks who call a luxury hunting estate a "ranch" like they call their mountain ski mansions a "cabin" as a kind of joke. So his "ranch" in Crawford is very tongue-in-cheek; its not a ranch but a superb estate with many four-star amenities, for example a full-time chef.
Notice, one loyalty I did not mention was to conservative thought. Because of course, conservative thought is not really something GWB was known for before he ran for governor. He was the spoiled and socialite rich son of a famous man, who claims to have "converted to Christianity" somewhere around when he needed to run for public office. Perhaps his conversion is genuine. We don't know that. But we know for certain he is not really a member of some middle class evangelical church; he goes to extreme upscale churches with super-wealthy people, of course. Like his daddy, he always has.
The question is, is he going to be more loyal to his voters, the types of people who he has never met, and never will meet, except to have the police throw them off his ranch, or to the friends, mentors, acquaintances from the elite super-rich who have surrounded him throughout his entire life? If you don't know the answer, you don't understand human nature well.
So conservatives, being middle class folks mostly, have been betrayed by campaign promises made by a phony Washington insider. So what else is new. How do you think the union workers felt about good ol' Bill Clinton, the fake good ol' boy from Arkansas, as he shipped America's jobs to China.
Posted by Sharn Cedar at October 14, 2005 10:16 PM
MJ,
I never said the Senate doesn't have the right to have a say in the proces. I said the MEDIA and the CONSERVATIVE PUNDITOCRACY and in general we, the People, don't.
By the way, how exactly has the President failed to uphold his expressed ideals? If you don't know ANYTHING about Harriet Miers, how in the world can you assume that she is NOT the jurist the president has promised us all along?
Do you have ANY evidence that she is not what you want her to be? Other than the fact that she is not one of the particular individuals you were expecting?
The Nixon example is ridiculous. The president is not doing anything he was not specifically elected to do. He is exercising his executive right to nominate a Supreme Court justice. I don't recall him ever promising to nominate a specific individual, and there was nothing on my ballot indicating that I was voting for Janice Rogers Brown to be a Supreme Court justice.
Presidents are elected (except for Gerald Ford, but, well, what are you gonna do?). The people choose Justices only to the extent that they choose the president who nominates and the Senators who advise and consent.
Everybody in America (with the exception of 100 Senators) gets to vote on one president and two senators--and NO Supreme Court justices.
By the way, I have to laugh at people like Sean Hannity when they get all worked up about how they voted for Bush because he doesn't back down from a fight, then somehow try to argue that he's backing off now. Can't they see that he's doing EXACTLY what they want him to do--just with the "wrong" person? Bush is fighting for the nominee HE believes in. No matter how the rest of the world feels about it.
I guess it's hard to see that as loyalty and nobility when you're the one he's fighting against. The problem is that the anti-Miers conservatives want a different kind of fight. They want a fight to put in THEIR choice, while the President is willing to fight--even against them--for HIS choice.
Good for him.
Posted by Kerry at October 14, 2005 11:44 PM
As to her president's columns for the Bar Journal, they are not, in fact, "scholarly writings," and any academic--including, I am certain, Miers herself--would laugh at the idea that they were or should have been.
A president's column is nothing more than a periodic base-touching exercise, written in the vernacular of the audience one is addressing. It never rises to the level of professionalism one would use in the scholarly papers associated with the profession or even the journal itself.
It is entirely unfair to judge her professional writing style from a newsletter-style periodic column. Only someone with an agenda to defeat her nomination would try to do so.
Wait and see how she handles the confirmation hearings. Then you can judge her intellect, her potential, and her fitness for office.
But you still won't get a vote.
Posted by Kerry at October 14, 2005 11:53 PM
Yah..No.
I don't care about her spelling or her grammar. I'm not suggesting she's a moron, nor do I care how well she spells.
What I care about are the opinions she articulates.
The general feel of everything she's ever written. 'Bad things can be eliminated if people of good will come together to eliminate bad things'.
She is O'Connor at best.
"When consensus of diverse leadership can be achieved on issues of importance, the greatest impact can be achieved."
Oh joy, I can see that working wonderful havoc on the court.
Did I say O'Connor? Cause that's O'Connor. I'm sure she'll want to reach some concensus with Ginsburg, a decisive opposite of Scalia, which will win her the coveted 'moderate' position, which she seems to have an affinity for.
Ok ok, affirmitave action is constitutional, BUT, only for then next 40 years.
10 commandments in courtrooms are allowed, BUT only if the person who hung them did so with a historical viwe of the plaque he hung rather then a religious view at the time he was hanging it.
Ugh.
Posted by MJohnson at October 15, 2005 12:31 AM
"Wait and see how she handles the confirmation hearings. Then you can judge her intellect, her potential, and her fitness for office."
I allready know how she'll handle the confirmation hearings. She'll do her Stonewall Jackson impersonation. We'll learn that she knows how to dodge a question, and that's it. The 'Ginsburg' rule that completely interferes with the ability of the Senate to advice and consent.
I _COULD_ be wrong about that, we'll find out, but I'm not wrong. Wait and see.
The hearings will tell us nothing. Saying 'wait for the hearings' is a stall tactic. If we wait long enough, she'll have a life time appointment after all, and then it's REALLY too late to do anything about it.
Posted by MJohnson at October 15, 2005 12:34 AM
Thanks for the intelligent comments, UY -- they are always appreciated.
Here's the deal, Kerry: Just because I voted for the guy doesn't mean I walk in lockstep with everything he does or believes. I counted on him to make a better effort to cut spending -- he proved he couldn't be trusted on that count. I counted on him to deal with the illegal alien/border security issue -- he proved he coudln't be trusted on that issue. The two greatest things he's done in the past five years have been standing firm in the War on Terror and cutting taxes and it just so happens that one of those -- the War on Terror is the single most important issue of our time. Additionally, who were we supposed to vote for: Gore or Nader? Give me a break!
On the Miers issue, Bush chickened out. This was the time for a bold move and he blinked. She maybe be the female embodiment of Antonin frickin' Scalia, but we don't know that and chances are, she isn't. There were literally dozens of more qualified candidates who have records. We should be duking it out on the Hill with one of those. Instead we're doing a "trust me" on Bush's personal attorney. Remember the last time another President Bush said "trust me"? We got Souter. But then what did we expect considering he also gave us "read my lips, no new taxes"?
Posted by Steve at October 15, 2005 12:02 PM
>>Thanks for the intelligent comments, UY -- they are always appreciated.
So does that mean you finally understand what a rube youve been?
Posted by Um Yeah at October 15, 2005 02:32 PM
“Monks don’t accept what I say just out of respect for me. Just as gold is tested in the fire, test my words in the fire of spiritual experience.”
Buddha
Posted by wandering_brit at October 15, 2005 08:59 PM
Save you faith for God. From politicians, demand proof.
I think that says it all really. My vote for President Bush was an expression of my belief that he is most likely to make choices that I will agree with, not an expression of blind faith in and devotion to him.
Posted by Richard Frankel at October 16, 2005 02:11 AM
Amen, Richard!
Posted by Steve at October 16, 2005 10:06 AM
Well, then, Richard (and Steve), be mad at yourself, not at the president. Your vote for him was ALSO permission for him to make appointments using HIS judgment, not YOURS.
He's doing the job you elected him to do.
If you wanted a puppet, you should have written in Charley McCarthy.
Posted by Kerry at October 16, 2005 03:17 PM
>>If you wanted a puppet
And they do, but then again so do you.
All you are arguing over is who pulls the strings.
Posted by Um Yeah at October 16, 2005 09:46 PM
Kerry: I don't know why you'd think I'm mad at Bush -- and I'm not mad at myself. I understand full well that the president is free to make the choices he wants and that's what we elected him for. We didn't elect a puppet, but I thought we at least elected a full-fledged conservative because that's what Bush was sold as.
Posted by Steve at October 16, 2005 11:03 PM
That being said, I don't regret voting for Bush for one minute -- either time. He's the right man for the most important job federal government has right now -- fighting terror -- and fighting terror has taken some of the focus off of other issues such as dealing with runaway spending. But Bush blinked on the Miers deal. I thought he was better than that.
Posted by Steve at October 16, 2005 11:16 PM
Thats some mighty fine brainwashing there.
Posted by Um Yeah at October 16, 2005 11:18 PM
Steve, I know you think he "blinked," but I still don't understand why. And I have every confidence that you and others will be totally satisfied by her presence on the bench, once you see her for who she is.
And you've still not dealt with the question of why this nomination is a bad choice, even if we accept the possibility that most (perhaps even all) of the "pet conservatives" didn't actually want the job.
I mean, think about it. If you'd waited 4 years for your current job and had your reputation and your family dragged through the mud, would YOU want to go through a Senate hearing to get this job?
Posted by Kerry at October 17, 2005 03:12 AM
Steve:
As an old guy. The modern Conservitive movement is 40 years old and is more vocal than my Grandfathers movement.
We have been burned so often in the past, as you mentioned, we demand to have our views respected and concidered.
60% of the Republican vote is strongly conservitive and we expect some return on our money. This is the sign of a strong and growing party, Vox populi.
Bill
Posted by Little Bill at October 17, 2005 08:52 PM
>>we demand to have our views respected and concidered.
Does that include Intelligent Design??
Posted by mattk at October 19, 2005 01:34 PM
You're right Mattk.
We shouldn't consider intelligent design.
I flipped a coin and heads says it's false so I don't even have to know what it is.
Posted by MJohnson at October 19, 2005 04:13 PM
>>I flipped a coin and heads says it's false so I don't even have to know what it is.
Yep because thats exactly what its like.
Posted by Um Yeah at October 19, 2005 06:28 PM
UY, at least intelligent design isn't as ridiculous as macro-evolution, for which there is no evidence whatsoever.
At least intelligent design has evidence of a Designer.
Posted by Kerry at October 20, 2005 02:44 PM
>>at least intelligent design isn't as ridiculous as macro-evolution, for which there is no evidence whatsoever.
I laugh so hard at your mindless idiocy.
Posted by Um Yeah at October 20, 2005 10:57 PM
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