Charles Krauthammer continues his criticism of the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination in a Washington Post column suggesting an exit strategy (irreconcilable differences over documents). What I find interesting is his analysis of the President's underlying motivation:
The idea that Bush is looking to appoint some kind of closet liberal David Souter or even some rudderless Sandra Day O'Connor clone is wildly off the mark. The president's mistake was thinking he could sneak a reliable conservative past the liberal litmus tests (on abortion, above all) by nominating a candidate at once exceptionally obscure and exceptionally well known to him.
The problem is that this strategy blew up in his face. Her obscurity is the result of her lack of constitutional history, which, in turn, robs her of the minimum qualifications for service on the Supreme Court. And while, post-Robert Bork, stealth seems to be the most precious asset a conservative Supreme Court nominee can have, how stealthy is a candidate who has come out publicly for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion?Krauthammer also describes the difficult situation that Miers is now facing:
But now that Miers is so exposed on abortion, the Democrats will be poised like a reserve cavalry to come over the hills to attack her from the left -- assuming she has survived the attack from the right.While Krauthammer states that an imminent "debacle" can be affably avoided by a Miers' withdrawal, others suggest (HT: Stones Cry Out) that this have significant negative ramifications.(...)
But it gets worse: There's the off-stage stuff. John Fund reports that in a conference call of conservative leaders, two Miers confidants explicitly said that she would overturn Roe v. Wade. The subsequent denial by one of these judges that he ever said that, and the subsequent affirmation by two of the people who had heard the call that he did say so, create the nightmare scenario of subpoenaed witnesses contradicting each other under oath.
Update: A Certain Slant of Light has more.
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