Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination.
I am not surprised.
In fact, I think it’s possible that the suspicions I previously and repeatedly expressed have been confirmed.
(Not that I can prove it. But Bush and his team are far too politically savvy not to have been able to anticipate this.)
AFTERTHOUGHT: I hope my suspicions are wrong. Because I can’t shake this feeling that if I am right, people (including me, because I’ve wasted a lot of time writing about Miers) have been, well, manipulated.
NEW NOMINATIONS, ANYONE? (I’ve already proposed Reynolds, Volokh, Barnett and Kozinski, but I’m not entirely confident they’re on Karl Rove’s short list….)
UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg has called the Miers withdrawal “BRILLIANTLY ROVIAN!” (Via Gateway Pundit.)
Bush had no idea that the Senate might seek “internal White House documents,” of course….
(Link to Gateway via Glenn, who also links to the full text of Miers’ letter.)
MORE: Is it possible that we might get a libertarian on the court? Orin Kerr looked at Janice Rogers Brown last month, and pronounced her a “hard core libertarian.”
Might a Brown nomination be something both libertarians and moral conservatives could support?
(Go ahead! Call me a dreamer….)
SOBER AFTERTHOUGHT: If Janice Rogers Brown is the libertarian Kerr suggests she is, I don’t think her nomination is likely.
That’s because conventional politics means Culture War uber alles!
I hate to say this, but power abhors taking the Constitution literally. There’s too much to lose.
BIG NEWS
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4 responses to “BIG NEWS”
I nominate Timothy Sandefur also, formerly of Freespace, now co-blogging in Positive Liberty. Also, Jonathan Rowe (who was kind enough to mention Up With Beauty last year).
Doubt they’re on Rove’s list either, but a man can dream.
As for who Bush is now likely to nominate — going by his statement in 2000 (which conservatives are holding him to) — I will oppose a Scalia but welcome a Thomas.
Janice Rogers Brown sounds good to me from what I’ve heard.
Given the flare-up over the last several weeks, I still think that a right turn is coming. If so, look for Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell, or Harvie Wilkinson. I still think that Edith Jones would create too much of a fight; confirming a woman who is on the record as wanting to overturn Roe would cause most (if not all) Democratic senators (and perhaps a couple of Republicans) to bolt from the Gang of 14, bringing the nuclear option back to the table.
Miers certainly seemed like an appetizer for something. The conventional view right now everyone is that Bush miscalculated. I’m more inclined to see the Miers nomination as a deliberate gamble — an affordable risk.