NewsMax already has a
story up registering conservatives' disappointment. Ha, ha:
Conservatives are "pretty demoralized" over President Bush's surprise nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court, says Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.
Kristol noted, in an interview with Fox News, that with liberal Republican Sandra Day O'Connor leaving the court, Bush had a unique opportunity to put his conservative stamp on the Supreme Court.
Instead, Kristol suggests Bush "flinched."
"It looks like he capitulated," a pessimistic Kristol said. The conservative commentator noted she has absolutely no judicial record, and he fears she will be "another O'Connor, another Souter."
more on the flip....
Kristol sees Bush's pick of Miers as a slap in the face to conservative women jurists.
"He has passed over conservative judges, including female judges, who have long and distinguished records on the federal and state supreme courts," Kristol said.
[...]
"This is not a Scalia, a Rehnquist or, for that matter, a John Roberts in terms of quality of pick," he added. "It's hard to interpret this as anything but flinching from a fight."
Kristol suggested the Bush administration may have feared a nomination fight with Democrats on judicial philosophy, which he said is a fight that most conservative Republicans would have welcomed.
"It sends a bad signal," Kristol said. Conservative judges, particularly conservative women, that have been making the case for 5, 10 or 15 years, have been passed over in favor of someone with no record. That's hard to explain to conservatives."
I'm feeling better about this already.
This is gonna be tough for a lot of conservatives to swallow. Some of them are going to openly revolt, I think. Most will just complain loudly, but I think some of them may actually cross Bush. Maybe not Kristol, but I wonder what Dobson & Co. think about this?
UPDATE: Ah, good.
"Operation Rescue" will oppose:
While many pro-life groups were frustrated with the lack of information about the abortion stand of Bush’s first Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts, even less is known about Harriet Miers. Some have placed her in the same category as pro-abortion administration officials Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes.
"We must reject the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court of the United States," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Malkin is pissed - "utterly underwhelmed":
What Julie Myers is to the Department of Homeland Security, Harriet Miers is to the Supreme Court. (Video of the announcement here via NYT).) It's not just that Miers has zero judicial experience. It's that she's so transparently a crony/"diversity" pick while so many other vastly more qualified and impressive candidates went to waste. If this is President Bush's bright idea to buck up his sagging popularity--among conservatives as well as the nation at large--one wonders whom he would have picked in rosier times. Shudder.
Reax around the right side of the blogosphere is mostly negative--and brutally so...