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October 27, 2005
Declaring After The Fact
It's all moot now, but overnight I had decided I could not support Miers. What clinched it for me was Captain Ed's devastating post in which he highlighted the truly awful speech Miers gave in 1993 to the Executive Women of Dallas. Ed claims that Miers speech was very troublesome in content as well as execution, and he provides quotes from the speech that give ample support to his point. Here's one such excerpt from the speech:
"The ongoing debate continues surrounding the attempt to once again criminalize abortions or to once and for all guarantee the freedom of the individual woman's right to decide for herself whether she will have an abortion."
Now, I'm in no way claiming my writing is perfect, or that I'm a grammar expert, or that I reason with the precision of Ramesh Ponnuru. But in this statement by Miers on abortion rights the basic sentence is "Debate continues." An astute grasp of the obvious was almost concealed by the Mobius strip sentence structure.
And I don't buy the arguments that a) the speech was written twelve years ago; or b) it wasn't written for verbatim delivery or publication. First, as Ed points out, twelve years ago she was 48 and head of Texas State bar; and second, the kinds of errors and clumsiness displayed by the speech are indicative of a problem more fundamental than those caused by haste or informal note taking. The fact that a person is writing notes for a speech doesn't mean that the nature of that person's thinking should be obscured; in fact, the closer one gets to outline format the more clear the reasoning ought to get. After all, shouldn't you be paring down to key ideas and thought processes?
Anyway, now it's time for Bush to be a "uniter"--of his own party. He is presented with yet another opportunity to galvanize the base of people that worked so hard to put him in office. (And no, I'm not saying that Bush is required to submit his choice to the editors of National Review for approval. I just hope he acknowledges there are conservative principals that are more important than personal loyalty.) I still trust and believe in this president, but I also still reserve the right to disagree with or even oppose his policies. An emailer to Jonah Goldberg decried the Republicans' lack of "party discipline", but Jonah would have none of that and neither will I. I did trust Bush on Miers, until the evidence clearly indicated he had made a mistake. I'm not going to follow him off a cliff.
As I told my wife this morning, one of Ronald Reagan's great strengths was the ability to separate the issues he dealt with into those on which he would bend a little or even retreat, and those he would never compromise on. In light of that, I think Bush's next choice will be very revealing.
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» America suffered a tremendous loss.... from Media Lies
....when Harriet Miers withdrew. Many conservative activists in this country may never understand that, because they don't see the Harriet Miers I see. For me to introduce you to that Miers, I must necessarily write a lengthy treatise. It is not pos... [Read More]
Tracked on October 29, 2005 06:19 PM
Comments
I think you're right on about the significance of this choice, but he'd better make it soon or else I am going to collapse from nervous exhaustion.
I'm getting out my SCOTUS tea leaves again--do you have any brilliant picks?
Posted by: Academic Elephant at October 27, 2005 06:26 PM
I'm an Earl Grey man, myself. ;-)
Posted by: Jeff at October 27, 2005 06:31 PM
