October 27, 2005
An up or down vote?
Hugh Hewitt has taken a lot of heat in the blogosphere for his continued support of Harriet Miers. Even up until last night, he was blasting those of us on the right expressing our displeasure with the nomination:
Now, however, a big slice of conservative punditry has decided that the long march back isn’t worth the risk that Harriet Miers isn’t who the president and her close associates say she is. On the basis of a very thin set of papers –some of them distorted, and all of them cherry-picked– and with an absolute refusal to entertain any of the many arguments and testimonies on her behalf, this caucus has seized on the very tactics most conservatives have long denounced in order to do what?
To deny Harriet Miers a hearing and an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.
Hugh is trying to equate our disdain for this nomination and hpoes to see it fail with the Democrats’ obstructionist tactics and filibusters. In trying to do so, he is flat out wrong.
There’s a big, big difference between us and the Democrats trying to filibuster. They were trying to DENY hearings or a vote because they thought they would lose that. We were pressuring Bush and/or Miers to withdraw the nomination.
Perhaps, if this nomination had reached the stage of hearings, you might have heard calls from conservatives unhappy with the nomination for our own president’s nomination. But you wouldn’t have heard that from me, nor would I have supported any attempts to stop the senate from an up-or-down confirmation vote. But I am glad the nomination was volutarily withdrawn, because this means that I don’t have to lobby my two Republican Senators to try to get them to vote against the Republican president’s nominee.
From the start, I thought this nomination was a mistake, as I thought there were much better known quantities available. After a while, I grew to oppose the nomination, as some of the unknowns became known, and didn’t look so good. But at no time have I ever supported denying Miers a fair hearing or an up or down vote. I supported a voluntary withdrawal of the nomination, and barring that, hoped that the nomination would be defeated when it received its up or down vote.
I want to make this perfectly clear. Had Bush and Miers not withdrawn the nomination, it had gone through hearings, and she’d been confirmed, I would have accepted it. I wouldn’t have liked it, but I would have accepted it. But what happened today, and the pressure we on the right have brought to bear, is by no means a defeat to the process. We have not tried to deny her a hearing, we have only tried to convince the President that we thought the nomination was a bad one and that he could do better.
I have a question for Hugh. If it had come down to it, would he have supported Republican senators who chose to vote against Miers? Does he want to see President Bush’s nominee be confirmed, or would he be satisfied with an up or down vote that she loses?
No Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
