Carnacki has a
diary high on the recommended list gloating (for lack of a better word) about the Republican collapse into civil war over the Miers nomination. Jerome a Paris has a similar
diary, citing the Financial Times, headlined "Bush 'a fake conservative'".
A lot of this attitude goes back to the right-wing blogosphere's visceral negative reaction to the Miers announcement, and the perception is reinforced by Viguerie's letter (republished by Aravosis on americasblog) and Brownback's reported opposition to the nomination.
I think we're getting snookered. Miers is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and I've got the proof on the flip.
The key here is that Bush is in fact,
pace Jerome and the Financial Times, a religious conservative. Carnacki's diary quoted former Reagan advisor Bruce Bartlett:
"Just in the past few months," Bartlett said, "I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do."
Now, Carnacki is reading current events to suggest this analysis might be wrong, but there's more than enough evidence that Bartlett in fact was right. All the biographies of Bush insist the guy underwent a born-again conversion sometime in the 1970s -- the documentary film With God on Our Side is only one such source confirming the centrality of born-again Christianity to his entire world-view.
Since she was nominated, people have been parsing Miers's record to see how she thinks on particular issues. Her abortion record, in particular, is contradictory. She has taken some actions at certain times that seem to indicate a tolerance towards a woman's right to choose, but she also protested the ABA's formal position on the issue. People have also been trying to figure out where she stands on gay rights, and have come up with contradictory answers.
I submit this is the wrong way to look at her. The right approach to Miers -- the key to understanding both why Bush appointed her and why she represents a very clear danger to the progressive movement in this country -- is to understand that she also is a born-again Christian.
Now, this detail has been starting to come out over the last couple of days, but it's the subject of a full-scale treatment in today's Boston Globe (buried of course deep inside the second section of the newspaper, on A25 if I'm not mistaken). Here's the lede:
One evening in the 1980s, several years after Harriet E. Miers dedicated her life to Jesus Christ, she attended a lecture at her Dallas evangelical church with Nathan Hecht, a colleague at her law firm and her on-and-off boyfriend. The speaker was Paul Brand, a surgeon and the author of ''Fearfully and Wonderfully Made," a best-selling exploration of God and the human body.
When the lecture was over, Miers said words Hecht had never heard from her before. ''I'm convinced that life begins at conception," Hecht recalled her saying. According to Hecht, now a Texas Supreme Court justice, Miers has believed ever since that abortion is ''taking a life."
The article goes on to say that:
her personal values have been shaped by her abiding faith in Jesus and by her membership in the massive red-brick Valley View Christian Church, where she was baptized as an adult, served on the missions committee, and taught religion. At Valley View, pastors preach that abortion is murder, that the Bible is the literal word of God, and that homosexuality is a sin -- although they also preach that God loves everybody.
When Bush met with Miers prior to naming her to the Supreme Court, the article says, he did not ask her opinions on abortion or gay rights. But then again, did he really have to? Miers knows the secret handshake, as it were, the coded language that born-again Christians share based on their own personal religious experiences. Bush knows her religion. He knows she shares his faith. He's worked with her for ten years, he know what they agree on.
More useful quotes from the Globe article:
Some religious conservatives have expressed deep dissatisfaction with the Miers nomination, contending that she has never taken public stands on hot-button social issues. But her friends point to Valley View as evidence that she is cut from conservative cloth. They say she's not a ''holy roller" who flaunts her religion on her sleeve, but she lives her faith as a born-again Christian.
"People in Dallas know she's a conservative," said her friend Ed Kinkeade, a federal district judge. "She's not Elmer Gantry, but she lives what she believes. . . . I'm like, y'all, has George Bush appointed anyone to an appellate court that is a betrayal to conservatives?"
While the initial reaction in the right-wing blogosphere may have been authentic, what we're seeing now -- Viguerie's email, Brownback's public opposition -- is Kabuki theater. The Christian right is hiding their true intentions to get more Democrats to sign on to Miers, and are willing to publicly oppose her in order to get us to go along. There's no doubt of that in my mind, and Kinkeade's quote above simply confirms the point to me.
There are antiabortion pamphlets inside the church and literature opposing premarital sex. Key and his wife, Kaycia, said they never asked Miers what she thought about those issues, because they never thought they had to.
"We've known Harriet for 30 years, and we've never had any reason to discuss these hot topics," Kaycia Key said. "But I can say one thing: She's a totally committed Christian."
It looks like Miers is going to be approved. She's going to the Court. And when she does, we're fucked.
Update [2005-10-5 10:18:15 by litho]: I missed Armando's heavily commented front-page story the first time through. Will's objections to Miers, coming from the conservative intelligentsia, may be sincere. It's when religious conservatives trash Miers that we should consider that they may be dissembling.
Update [2005-10-5 10:55:30 by litho]: New title.