Miers' Withdrawal/ Reconnecting With Conservatives

I am very pleased that Miers withdrew. I thought she was a mistake from the beginning. I did not post on it because I thought all of the problems with her nomination had been raised by others. She is a competent attorney but she was not of the quality that is required on the Supreme Court. As a result, I feared that she would be easily swayed by the dark side -- I mean the liberals -- on the Court. This risk was compounded by the fact that her positions were all over the map in the past and the fact that she tended to say whatever would please those around her. You cannot be a principled conservative and seek to be admired by everyone. Look at how Scalia, Thomas and Bork are reviled by liberals.

Now that Miers has withdrawn, I pray that Bush reconnects with his base by nominating a clearly conservative and articulate jurist.

If he does not, his presidency is effectively over and the benefits of his presidency to the country will be squandered.

If he does attempt to reconnect (and I think he is -- as I explain below) conservatives must rally to his side as never before. If his presidency founders the war will founder and conservative ideals will founder. The next president will, even if he is a Republican, flee from the President's policies (including the war) on the grounds that they are a proven political failure. But, they are not and should not be remembered that way. The next president will avoid doing any big things. The war on terror will devolve into a matter for the police, with the country responding with arrests only after each inevitable blow.

I think that the President is trying to reconnect with his base. Debkafile posted this week that Palestinian President Abbas left his meeting with the Bush with no assurances of help from the U.S. and with an admonishment from the President that he will not enable a Palestinian state during his the Bush administration because the Palestinians have done nothing to crack down on terrorism (this despite a seeming warm post meeting press conference by the leaders). While Debka credibility is very questionable - their accuracy tends to be much greater on matters related to Palestinians and Israel. If what they said is correct, the President has clearly abandoned the “peace process”, at least in private. That is a position that any conservative should support. The Palestinian’s are clearly one of our opponents in this war against militant Islamists. Israel (and the U.S.) should not seek peace until the Palestinians are forced to abandon militant Islam.

President Bush has also begun to take steps to woo back fiscal conservatives. This administration’s spending has been out of control and on all the wrong stuff (I suspect some increased spending would be acceptable to fiscal conservatives. For instance, I think they would happily support any expenditures required to enlarge the Army and Marines). This week he has made several public statements about getting spending under control. If he follows up on these with some real action by the administration his actions should be strongly supported by conservatives.