Harriet Miers

Lauren at Feministe has the same mixed feelings about SCOTUS nominee Harriet Miers that I have. Miers is too anti-choice for my taste, and she doesn't seem to have much experience interpreting Constitutional law. However, Miers did open doors for women. According to Lauren, "she first female president of Texas State Bar and first female president of Dallas Bar Association." I was especially pleased to learn that "she used her posts to start conversations between warring interest groups, and developed a record for being “unafraid to take on controversial issues, sometimes even to her own political detriment.”" I hope this means she won't be a right wingnut ideologue operating from the bench if she is confirmed.

Bloggers have already pointed out that she organized a women's studies lecture series while she was on the advisory board for Southern Methodist University's law school. Gloria Steinem was one of the speakers.

I've looked at conservative blogs to see their reaction to Miers, and they are not happy. Redstate.org, Little Green Goofballs, and Free Republic resident wingnuts are going bonkers. They went into apoplexy when they learned about Miers' role in that women's studies lecture series, especially when they learned that Gloria Steinem was the first speaker. The Republican base is spintering over Miers. Colleen Parro, executive director of the National Republican Coalition for Life, said that "I think it certainly could be a sign of bigger problems. There has been an underlying feeling, deeper than concern, among many Republicans for a long time now regarding the outrageous spending going on, the lack of border security, and the threat of terrorism, a whole range of issues. The Miers nomination just caused it to boil over." I think that the wingnut fundamentalist base was expecting someone like Janet Rogers Brown - an ideologue who would deliver their demands from the bench - like overturning Roe v. Wade - but that's not what they got. They are pissed. Republicans are finally admitting what Democrats have been talking about for aeons.

On top of all that, there are the conspiracy and money-laundering indictments against Tom Delay and the investigations into Karl Rove's role in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Richard Viguerie, "a Republican activist and advertising executive credited with pioneering the use of mail to voters' homes as a way of making pinpoint political appeals, said that "[w]hen you add all of these things on top of each other, the party is drunk with power, the ethics problems are so thick you can cut them with a knife. I think Republicans are heading for some tough times in the 2006 and 2008 elections."

So Republicans are finally seeing what the Dems have seen since Bush was crowned King George by the Supreme Court.

The problem with Harriet Miers is that no one really knows yet what she stands for. There has been allegations of cronyism, and considering her relationship with Bush, that's not surprising. I think that with Bush's approval ratings going into a swandive, especially after Katrina, he couldn't risk putting an out-and-out wingnut on the Supreme Court. I need to learn more about Miers before I decide how I feel about her, but some of what I'm learning about her is actually quite good. If she can keep her personal feelings about abortion from influencing her decisions about the law, she might be quite good.