Wow . . . Miers has withdrawn

[pegkerr]

President Bush today "reluctantly accepted" Harriet Miers' withdrawal from her nomination to the Supreme Court, according to a statement from the White House. In the statement, Miers said her nomination presented a "burden for the White House." Read here.

Well, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; it was obvious the nomination was in major trouble. Not quite clear what happened. Were Rove and Cheney too distracted so that she didn't get vetted properly? The White House thought to put their chips on a "stealth candidate," not realizing how fiercely the conservatives believed "You owe us, buddy." Did they not know how vapid she came across?"

What will they do now? With the indictments looming, I'm not sure that Bush thinks he can risk the brangle he'd get if he nominated a lightning rod like Owens or Brown (well, if the spineless Democrats we've been seeing gave him one. Would the Democrats roll over completely as they have been doing for the past several years, or perhaps, smelling blood in the water, would they finally put up a fight?) Is the torture memo too controversial to preclude nominating Gonzales? (Edited to add: Oh. Duh. Salon points out the nature of Miers' withdrawal makes it impossible to nominate Gonzales. His nomination would pose the exact same "document problem" that Miers' supposedly did. So Gonzales is presumably out, too.)

We'll watch the soap opera and see. Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing the indictments come down from Fitzgerald's investigations . . .

Comments

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

My guess is that the same sort of you-can't-see-it rule on papers would be applied to Gonzales. Add in the torture stuff and the conservatives' fingerspitzfuhl that Gonzales is too liberal on stuff, and the end result is that Bush won't nominate him.

God knows what he'll dig up. I doubt a lightning rod, what with the indictments.

[sangerin.livejournal.com]

Now I'm worried about who we'll get instead.

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

The timing makes me laugh. WH was obviously expecting indictments to be announced today, hence Miers' withdrawal gets "top news" billing.

What GWB will probably do now is wait for the indictments to come out, then nominate a complete right-winger to rally his base behind him.

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

Wow is right. Well, it was the Right that was actually coming down on her the most lately. The most recent thing I heard was that, despite being a member of an evangelical congregation "back home," in Washington she's been attending a gay-friendly Episcopal parish.

Ergle. I am so TIRED of people being labled "insufficiently anti-gay." Chances are she may not even have known if the congregation was officially welcoming (very nearly all Episcopal churches are these days). I'm betting that there were no same-sex orgies going on during mass, after all. ;) Now, I don't think she's a genius (she thinks Bush is the smartest man she knows, after all ::snort::) and I have no idea what she really believes in terms of religion, but maybe when some people are looking for a congregation upon moving to a new place the first thing they think of asking is NOT how rabidly anti-gay the church is, using that as a litmus test of that congregation's "worthiness."

Still not sure how this woman got through law school, though, or passed the bar.

Harriet Miers

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

I was so firmly convinced that Bush would never withdraw Miers' nomination, and that Miers would never back down, that when I first saw this post, I thought you were quoting an Onion headline. I really had to stop and think, and then click on the "link," to realize this was true (real, solid). Now, I don't know what to expect Mr. Bush to do next; but since I thought John Roberts was a really respectable choice, it's clear that Mr. Bush *can* pick qualified nominees -- let's see if he wants to bother doing so.

Nate Bucklin

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I think George Bush saw Harriet Miers as an image of himself: the underdog, not appreciated or respected, whose strength of character made up for the lack of formal qualifications.

(I don't see Bush that way, but I think he does.) Bush does not, and cannot, believe in external honors because he doesn't have any.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I'm not happy about this development.

From my perspective, there are just two possibilities for a Bush appointee: a wingnut or a crony. Given that choice, I prefer a crony. My fear is that now we will get a wingnut.

B

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

*Sigh* What has been constant for me with this administration is that whenever I think, okay, this has got to be as bad as it gets they somehow find a way to make things worse.

Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but...

[skg.livejournal.com]

Has anyone considered that this was a deliberate move by the Bush administration?

Put a woman up as a red-herring and then have her withdraw because of reasons that will also prevent putting a minority (Gonzales) up--and then when they put a conservative white male up they can refute criticism about not putting up a woman or minority?

Maybe I'm just paranoid...but it doesn't mean I'm not being followed.