Remember our new friend Manny Miranda? He's the dude who was busted stealing files from Democratic servers when working for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. It wasn't all bad, though, since he gave Frist such hilariously bad advice on Latino outreach that he helped crater that demographic's support for Republicans for a generation.
But he crossed the line from thug and thief to self-parody when he got the leading lights of the conservative movement to sign a letter demanding a filibuster of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, while threatening current Minority Leader Mitch McConnell with some not-so-veiled gay baiting:
In a letter to be delivered to Senate Republicans Tuesday, more than 145 conservatives – including Grover Norquist, Richard Viguerie and Gary Bauer — call for a filibuster of Sotomayor’s nomination if that’s what it takes to force a "great debate" over judicial philosophy.
But in an interview with POLITICO, Manuel Miranda – who orchestrated the letter – went much farther, saying that Mitch McConnell should "consider resigning" as Senate minority leader if he can’t take a harder line on President Barack Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee.
Miranda accused McConnell of being "limp-wristed" and "a little bit tone deaf" when it comes to judicial nominees.
The only problem was that, well, Miranda had tried to make name for himself by claiming that judicial filibusters were unconstitutional. From the very top of his website:
Dear friends,
Since I left as counsel to the Senate Majority Leader in 2004, I have not been idle. In 2005, I formed the National Coalition to End Judicial Filibusters to press for the "constitutional option" to end extra-constitutional filibusters of judicial nominations...
So was Manny Miranda really pushing Senate Republicans to take an unconstitutional action, or was he simply full of shit during the Bush years? He was stuck in a quandry. Why oh why didn't he scrub his website BEFORE he demanded a filibuster of Sotomayor? Greg Sargent got a hold of him to essentially ask him these questions:
Manuel Miranda, the controversial leader of a big conservative coalition against Sonia Sotomayor, just acknowledged in an interview that she was all but certain to get confirmed, allowed that the votes almost certainly weren’t there for a filibuster, and said it was unlikely he’d push for one in the end.
"I am pretty confident that as things stand now, this nominee will be confirmed," Miranda allowed, after I asked him about GOP Senator John Cornyn’s acknowledgment that the GOP didn’t have the votes to filibuster her [...]
When I asked him if he expected Sotomayor to "merit" a filibuster, Miranda said No. "I don’t expect it," he allowed. Asked if he expected that anything would emerge in her record that would prompt him to insist on a filibuster, Miranda said: "I do not."
"We are not asking Senators to unnecessarily delay, filibuster, or reject," Miranda said, adding that if Dems and Republicans agreed on enough debate time, as he expects, he wouldn’t demand obstruction. "We’re asking them for a grand debate."
Miranda knows he's beat. The votes aren't there, Franken will soon be seated making confirmation even easier, Sotomayor is a solid, safe pick, and her story makes it near-impossible for Republicans to wage a tough campaign against her without further alienating a key and growing voting constituency.
On top of that, his thieving background makes him ill-suited for the task, making it easy for the Republican leadership to dismiss him:
"It’s unfortunate that one disgraced former employee of previous Senate leadership has decided to air out his grievances rather than join the conservative effort to examine Judge Sotomayor’s record," said a senior GOP Senate aide. "Not only did this guy steal the Democrats’ playbook, he seems to be implementing it."
On top of all that, he's been exposed as an intellectually dishonest hack, meaning he can't credibly call for a filibuster anyway. He considers it unconstitutional, and even founded an organization with the express purpose of selling that point!
So not only is Manny Miranda beat this time around, but I doubt he'll play point next time Obama nominates a Supreme Court justice, even a more controversial one. Too bad, I was growing rather fond of him.