Bench Memos on National Review Online
"What is clear is that the same White House that says it won't listen to senators who tell them the Miers nomination should be withdrawn was highly solicitous of Senate objections to other qualified nominees. One federal judge was nixed by a powerful senator over a judicial opinion that would have been attacked by feminists. Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, both of whom won tough confirmation battles for seats on appellate courts only this spring, were nixed by other GOP Senators as too tough a battle for the high court. Alice Batchelder of the Sixth Circuit was deep-sixed by an old Ohio political rival, Republican National Committee co-chairman Jo Ann Davidson. The White House and some senators deemed Edith Jones of the Fifth Circuit too difficult to confirm. Given Mr. Bush's idée fixe that the nominee had to be a woman, it's possible the White House allowed itself to be pushed into a corner in which Ms. Miers was literally the only female left."
Is it then so very difficult to understand that the President didn't want, or think he could win a nomination fight? Certainly not the kind of fight that it would have taken to get a Janice Brown through the hearings, and in his mind believed that someone devoid of a trail could only be objected to because of too little information, and not because of too much information.
There's a totally different battle scheme underlying this whole Miers fracas. The other female judges in question, [and he'd long since made up his mind or had it made up for him, cough, Laura, that the next justice MUST be a woman] would have been thoroughly vilified by the left as well as certain cowardly Republicans, and with Miers all of the focus is upon a LACK of things to fight about. Except her dearth of formal training in constitutional law, but the fact that she is unqualified is nowhere near as troublesome as someone who truly WAS qualified.
The Catch-22 of George Bush's design. Anyone good enough isn't good enough.
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