I had a similar thought in my blog this morning. The Miers withdrawal was almost certainly timed to be in the same news cycle as the Libby/Rove/whoever indictments. If the administration is going to have to eat two servings of crap this week, it might as well get it all overwith at once.
As it is, with the indictments most likely coming on Friday, it sets up a nice one-two punch instead.
As to whether she was a smokescreen from the start, I really doubt it. This will hurt the administration way more than the brief distraction will help.
Here’s the thing: if Rove is indicted, it’s going to be very, very difficult for Bush to push any agenda. Bringing a new nominee forward is going to be horribly difficult for him now.
If he were smart and a mastermind (or a mastermind’s minion), he would have kept Miers on: if/when Rove is indicted, he’d have a news story to put forward to break the rhythm of stuff, or else he could push ahead with her and point out quietly to Republicans that no other nominee would stand a chance of getting past the first round of questions at this point.
If he were really serving a mastermind, of course, said mastermind wouldn’t have fucked up the Wilson affair so grandly.
Rove is really, really smart, and I give him props for being the most powerful political consultant in the world. But he’s not all-knowing, and this time he’s screwed the pooch.
There’s some scuttlebutt that says that’s exactly what Fitzgerald is working on – that this case is not just about the unveiling of Valerie Plame, it’s the unveiling of Valerie Plame as part of an effort to use falsified intelligence to sell the Iraq war.
I’ve never believed anything O’Reilly said before, and I don’t plan to start now. Sometimes a bad nominee is just a bad nominee. (I’ve been trying to figure out a way of linking the Freud quote, the Miers nomination, and the last stanze of an e.e. cummings poem, but my punfu isn’t strong enough.)
I didn’t say he was wrong necessarily, just thrown in what I heard on what many here think is a republican media machine.
But I will say that if you probably don’t listen to him much, because, although I’m more liberal than most U.S. liberals probably, he rarely says something I strongly disagree with, and often says things I fully agree with. What makes him right if anything, it is topic selection … but his opinions in themselves generally are sound.
Harriet Miers struck me as an expendable non-person in this administration. An adviser among many, a ‘yes woman’ in an administration choc full of yes people. Pleasant to have around, sure, as all ‘yes people’ are, but disposable nonetheless. I just figured the only rational reason why Bush nominated her was to ‘prep’ congress for a more archly conservative nomination.
His base were up in arms, not just because Miers was a relative unknown, but because her conservative credentials weren’t prominent enough. The hard Right had been unofficially promised a hard conservative (or at least a strict constructionist in the Clarence Thomas mould) and erupted when it became clear that Miers wasn’t it. The Right are now even more desirous for a conservative candidate because, whereas before they’d accepted such a nomination as a given, now they feel they’re owed one. If Bush nominates a hard conservative he’ll win back the support of the footsoldiers (and consequently their representatives) very quickly.
Bush might face opposition from moderate Republicans but probably not as much as he would have faced had he nominated an arch conservative straight off the bat. Some may be fearful that, if they object again, they could be made subject to some or other unofficial reprimand. Some of them may be inclined to side with him just in case their opposition results in another Miers like fiasco. Some again may just lend such a candidate their support because they just want to get the fucking thing over with.
Of course, the Democrats will be in uproar but they’ve already expended some of their political capital by objecting so vociferously to Miers. Their rhetoric may well grow weary in the eyes of voters and politicians alike. Besides, no-one in the Bush administration gives a fuck what Democrats think anyway.
It’s more likely that Bush just screwed up nominating Miers. However, I think the fiasco may perhaps have left him in a position to nominate a far more right wing candidate.
You could be right. It’s a possibility, but I think a very small one. The right wanted Clinton’s impeachment trial to be a proxy for a vote of confidence on his entire presidency, and that just didn’t fly with the American people. Besides, you’d have to assume that Fitzgerald is some disaffected Republican who resents supporting Bush now that he (Fitzy) opposes the war. Is there any evidence that he fits that bill? If there were, I’d be more inclined to think you were correct.
I have no doubt that the Democrats in Congress will try to make it a proxy on the whole war issue, but unless they have some sway over Fitzy, I don’t see how they can pull it off. The press might attempt to do that, too, but I just see that playing into the hands of the Bushwhackers already out there, not creating new Bushwhackers.
Not to gloat, but I predicted this would happen in my blog three weeks ago. After the Roberts nomination, in which credentials became the deciding factor, Bush chose someone with no experience as a judge. Coming from someone opposed to affirmative action, he looked first looked for a woman, and then chose among the available candidates - something even its proponents would oppose (I’m not remembering the source for that now). He had worked this sort of tactic already with Roberts, by insinuating that he was looking at Gonzales until his conservative base squealed. This time, he went so far as to give Miers the reins. Remember what he descibed as her primary qualification - that he could trust her. That really was the deciding factor as he needed her to take the fall. In hindsight, his admonition to conservatives to “trust him” eerily foreshadows today’s events.
I must admit the timing does puzzle me. The best explanation I can come up with was that he wasn’t expecting the Fitzgerald probe to be as bad as it is, or that he was indecisive or something. I can understand that he would want to move the whole question of the nominee as far back as he can though, in order to have the maximum amount of ‘political capital.’
Look for him to stall as long as possible, and then nominate an arch-conservative (who will make it through.)
Remember last year when Vice President Cheney was being questioned by Senator Leahy about allegations of possible conflict of interest between his office and Halliburton? The Vice President suddenly lost his temper and told the Senator to “go fuck himself”. The next few days where all spent talking about Cheney’s profanity and it was regarded as a major gaffe. But all the talk about the word “fuck” meant there was no room to discuss the Halliburton allegations.
Thanks, OP, for giving us Republicans SOMETHING to laugh about in an otherwise dismal week.
NO Republican regards Karl Rove as a genius, merely as a decent political strategist. But Democrats are so convinced that he’s an evil genius, they see his hand in EVERYTHING!
Guys, it’s pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
The Republicans are vulnerable, as they always have been. They’re beatable, as they always have been. We in the GOP are only too well aware of our weaknesses. But liberals are so paranoid and so shellshocked, they’ve built a so-so political consultant into a sinister Superman who’s secretly ruling the world.
As long as the Left is fixated on Rove (whom most Americans have barely heard of and don’t much care about), they’ll never get around to exploiting the real weaknesses of the GOP.
How the hell is Miers supposed to pave the way for anything?
The Democrats didn’t have to say squat. Heck, from all the reports I heard, they weren’t. Everyone was focusing on how much the right was displeased.
Now,even if Bush does get someone harder to the right (and let’s not kid ourselves here, Miers was a solid conservative, she just couldn’t prove it, or prove that she wouldn’t screw up and make a “liberal” decision by accident), the Democrats are in an even better position to shoot it down that they were before.
With Roberts they proved that the Democrats will allow a reasonable appointment, even one with conservative credentials.
With Miers, Bush proved that he’s capable of nominating a complete unworthy.
Now all the Democrats have to do is spin Bush’s next nomination as Miers redux. By no means an impossible task.
In other news, the Miers fiasco makes Bush look more like an idiot, making him harder to take seriously on other issues, and less likely to succeed on his agenda at all points.
Huh? In the beginning, there were a few questions about her stand on abortion, but they’ve been quiet for the most part, and today the line is that poor Harriet was stabbed in the back by the far right. If there is anyone at all in the moderate wing of the Republican party who thought she was a good choice, they could strike back by going against a far right nomination. In addition, the righties can hardly complain about the unfairness of blocking the President’s nomination now, can they?
I’m not sure the next nomination will be right or far right, but I suspect her credentials will be impeccable.
