The Fortunes of War
As many of you may be aware, President Bush recently appointed Harriet Miers to Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. With this decision I am afraid that the President just lost the Iraq War. As always, a lengthy explanation lurks below the cut.
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Personally, I would assume that Bush had to know that this was coming. He has surrounded himself with some very good political operators. So really, he must have thought that his allies in Congress would be unable to prevent a prolonged fight. So I would like to know if you think that the current ethics issues of DeLay and Frist were contributing factors to the apparent weakness of this nomination? Also do you think that Bush's latest action will leave him unable to help out incumbents as well as he has before in the upcoming election or will incumbents be less willing to ride on a seemingly lame duck's coattails? Also do you think its possible that Miers is a sacrificial nomination, and that Bush's camp wants the Democrats to use up their ammo on her? This was suggested to me by co-workers, but considering most Dems seem relatively ok with this, and that it's causing a huge and heretofor unheardof factional rift in his own party, i find this extremely unlikely. What the hell is Karl Rove doing? I may hate his guts, but I respect his ability and I find it hard to believe that he'd let a seemingly huge mistake like this occur. Thoughts?
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These are some good questions. I struggled with many of them myself while thinking about this essay, but didn't address them there because it would be kind of off topic. I was more concerned about the effects on the war than what the President is trying to accomplish.
Here's how I see it. First, I don't think that the ethics charges are a big deal. DeLay is going to beat his handily and Frist's is at worst about 1/5 as shady as Clinton's Arkansas cattle futures, which if you recall no one on the face of the planet cared about. Besides, nobody likes Frist, he's not a good Majority Leader, he's not running for reelection, and the GOP will hold his seat unless 2006 is a Republican bloodbath of epic proportions. So if he becomes a liability they'll toss him without blinking an eye.
Second, I'm having a real hard time seeing how the President can repair his political position to the point that he becomes a net positive for the party in the midterm elections. Look at the 2004 returns. The President got 51% of the vote by drumming up the Republican base to unprecendented levels. He had virtually no cross-party appeal, and because of the polarization effect there really isn't a political center anymore; instead, there's a center-left and a center-right, weakly affiliated to be sure, but most people have chosen sides. This is a long way of saying that without his base, the President has nothing.
It's possible, after all. The President could still shift gears and repair the damage. But he doesn't want to do that because it will make him look weak and it will damage his attempt to solidify the soft right vote into the Republican coalition. And vacilliating too obviously could be even worse than alienating the entire country, because then he would be hated without even being feared.
As for the sacrificial lamb angle, I don't buy it. The base wanted this fight badly and Miers was vetted by Harry Reid, the Senate Minority Leader, before nomination. If this nomination is killed, it will be killed by conservative Republicans, not by Democrats using ammo prematurely. A real sacrificial lamb would have looked something more like Janice Rogers Brown. The Democrats would have gone nuts over that and the confirmation hearings would have been ... entertaining, to say the least.
Here's what I think is happening. For legacy reasons, the President was desperate to avoid another Souter. He seems driven to not repeat any of his father's mistakes, and conservatives consider that nomination to be one of the top 3. The problem with Justice Souter, from the conservative perspective, was that nobody in the Washington Republican Party knew him - he came from New Hampshire and was recommended by some functionary. However, he also doesn't think that he can get an outspoken conservative through the confirmation process, and he's afraid that if he loses a big confirmation fight he's an instant lame duck.
So his idea was to nominate someone with no paper trail, someone who the Democrats can't really get a handle on, but someone which he knows to be a hard-core conservative on issues that matter to him. Who better than the very lady who has worked by his side for years? A lady who actually helped him pick Justice Roberts, for that matter? He's done this before: remember that Dick Cheney was the head of his Vice Presidential search team - the team that picked Dick Cheney. As for the base, he probably figured that they'd go along because they always have before.
Karl Rove didn't like the idea. Rumors were that he was pushing hard for another candidate at the last minute, so he knew that this was going to be bad - though not necessarily this bad. But he got overruled by the President. Now Rove is thinking that it is a long time until 2006. He's still got a chance to smooth this over and come out on top. But he's going to have to be really careful ... once a critical mass of legislators turn on him, Bush is done. And if the base's anger is lasting, that could happen within six months.
-Nick
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Now such a man is a useful tool, allowing you to keep your hands clean while you savage the opposition. I however am seeing a resurgance in the idea that the Republican's power is corrupting them, a theme the Republicans used against the Democrats to great effect in the past, when they swept Democrats from the majority in Congress. Accusations have been made about Frist's stock stewardship, Rove's actions in the Plame affair, the stuff the head of the FDA (I forget his name) did with the day after pill, the post-Katrina Fema fiasco, and now stuff with DeLay. Do you think, assuming DeLay beats his indictments, that he'll be able to return to the same level of authority and effectiveness that he held in the past, or will association with him be seen as more harmful than beneficial to all but the truest of his supporters? Might it be time for DeLay to go join a Republican think tank somewhere and wield power from behind the throne as it were?
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It is true that DeLay has favored strong-arm tactics to get his legislation through. But as far as I can tell he has been impeccably careful to comply with the letter of the law at all times. Looking at this indictment, it's clear that the DA found a jury to agree that there might have been a criminal conspiracy, but if you look closer even the *alleged* activity was perfectly legal. You can't have a criminal conspiracy to do something legal, even if people think that it violates the spirit of the laws.
It is possible that the Republican leadership in the Capitol will decide that DeLay is damaged goods after the indictment and not let him back into his position as Majority Leader. But I doubt it. Unlike Frist, he's far too effective at his job to just let him go for no good reason. They'll probably try to keep him away from the media more while he does his thing with the lobbyists and the legislators.
As far as the general theme of corruption, you're right. The Republicans have been in power long enough for the rot to set in. Which is why I badly wish that I could trust the Democrats with the war for a couple of elections to clean house. But I don't. Not yet, anyway.
-Nick
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