October 17, 2005
BELTWAY BUBBLE BOYS WITH BLOGS:
The Right and Miers: Sound, Fury, Yawns: Big-name Right-wing bloggers and pundits are livid about Bush's latest Supreme Court pick. So why do polls find only 9% of the GOP faithful oppose her? (Richard S. Dunham and Lee Walczak, 10/17/05, Business Week)
For several years, political bloggers of the Left, Right, and interplanetary variety have scorned Washington elites and what many dismiss as "MSM," the Mainstream Media, as hopelessly out of touch with America.But when it comes to Web-driven furor over President Bush's selection of White House Counsel Harriet Miers for a Supreme Court seat, it's the right-wing blogosphere that looks out of sync with its own grassroots.
While conservative bloggers have sliced, diced, and otherwise eviscerated Miers, Bush's surprise pick to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, new polls show that the Web's chattering classes are magnifying her troubles. Out in the Real America, the one where "online" can still mean the place to hang your wash, conservatives don't share the bloggers' disdain for the unassuming Texas lawyer.
An Oct. 6-10 Pew Research Center Poll found that just 9% of conservative Republicans want the Senate to reject Miers' nomination -- a modest increase on the 6% who opposed John Roberts, Bush's earlier choice for the high court. Only 14% of GOP conservatives worry that Miers won't be sufficiently conservative once installed on the bench.
You have to go some to be part of a smaller minority than Darwinists in America. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 17, 2005 10:50 AM
Of course the entire right-wing anti-Miers flap could have been a Karl Rove maskirova all along.
Posted by: Lou Gots at October 17, 2005 11:19 AMThe unspoken message of many of the angry right males and females on the Miers issue is that down deep, they have the same contempt for Bush's intellect that the left wing opponents of Bush do, but held their tounges when he was doing things they liked. The initial posts and articles from them following the pick dripped of intellectual contempt, though I suppose Ann Coulter is an expection -- she simply accused Bush of having an apparent relapse into alcoholism based on his Miers decision (but at least this may help patch up the Coulter-NRO feud that began in the wake of 9/11).
Posted by: John at October 17, 2005 11:27 AMBut... but... the NeoConRightWing Netroots got Trent Lott deposed when the rest of us were just sitting around passively! They run things, Orrin!
Err, yeah, whatever. :)
Posted by: kevin whited at October 17, 2005 11:41 AMHey, guys -- the final happy fact about all this is that no one pays any attention to any of this.
Posted by: Paul Cella at October 17, 2005 12:17 PMWe pro-immigration pro-lifers might be a smaller minority...
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger at October 17, 2005 1:30 PMOJ:
Do any of them live in detached housing? I thought they all lived on or about the 30th floor.
Posted by: ratbert at October 17, 2005 2:23 PMJust stop it. Bush may be a very smart fellow, that does not mean that he understands law. Nor does the result of an opinion poll mean anything. People know no more about Harriet Souter than they do about Adam's off ox. Of course that is the root of the problem.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at October 17, 2005 2:40 PMIt's true that Miers' lack of a paper trail or judicial experience leaves her opening to serious questioning. But she'll get that at the Judiciary Committee hearings, which is what the angry pundits should have been stressing calmly, instead of flying into fits of hysteria as if they blew October's rent money on some losing Supreme Court judicial nominee betting pool pick.
Posted by: John at October 17, 2005 3:09 PMWhat was Clarence Thomas's paper trail?
Posted by: oj at October 17, 2005 3:37 PMIn Anita Hills' diary.
Posted by: tefta at October 17, 2005 3:52 PMAnd The Exorcist.
Posted by: oj at October 17, 2005 3:55 PM