Thursday, October 27, 2005

Fasten Your Seatbelts

Sure, Harriet Miers was the crescendo of cronyism for the Cheny administration. Choosing one of Bush's biggest sycophants (and although there are so many to choose from, she wins simply on one statement: "one of the most brilliant men I've ever met") for the Supreme Court of the United States is a gaffe of historical proportions.

However, I think this really spells doom for the future of SCOTUS. Bush will now bow down to his SpongeDob Stickpants captors and nominate some completely wild-eyed Kool Aid drinker.

I've been secretly hoping Miers might make it through the hearings. It hurts Bush, it angers the American Taliban, and there is no certainty she would ever vote the theocon ticket as "religiously" as the hard right hope.

My liberal friends gasp in horror at the suggestion that I would root for this unqualified party hack to come so close to an appointment. Wouldn't having such a justice, uninterested in the Constituion her entire life, damage the body?

I think such an appointment would be terrifyingly less damaging than what we are now sure to get from Crony Central. We are about to get a nominee to the right of Roberts, and Roberts is going to be Bork-like.

In that context, I think appointing a coin to be flipped is less damaging; so yes, I think Miers and her lack of Constitutional curiosity, appointed as a gift for years of polishing the Bush knob, the woman whom may have helped Bush ignore the PDB famously predicting the attack on 9-11, and the woman who helped facilitate one of the dozens of coverups regarding Bush's national guard service; is a less damaging appointment than what I expect Bush to nominate next.

God knows, I hope I'm wrong. Look, Bush is something of a coward. He needs guys like Rove to fight his battles, because he's too afraid to do the dirty work himself. He's famously resented his dad, but ran to him with open arms when Herbert could help him avoid the draft. Bush is very unlikely to piss off Pat Robertson or James Dobson a second time. He'll be thinking of that leather strap and woodshed.

The only thing Bush values as much as avoiding tough work is loyalty. Somehow the guy has always managed to find enough people to realize his family is powerful enough to keep an idiot like Junior in power no matter how inept he is. He needs people to read for him, to coach him, to handle him, and to keep him off the bottle.

For this reason, the trifecta of a Gonzales nomination: first Hispanic (my legacy!), close ties to the executive branch (he'll save our hides when the investigations come!), and unblinking loyalty, may give Bush the comfort he needs to go against the theocons one more time. Certainly, revenge is another Bush core belief.

But I don't expect it; and I'm less enamored of seeing such a nomination succeed. It's one thing to put a coin-flipper on the Supreme Court; it's another to put the author of the torture policy on the bench.

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