Monday, October 03, 2005

October Surprise - Harriet Miers for SCOTUS

President Bush has nominated White House Counsel Harriet Miers, 60, to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. The Monday morning nomination seems to have most back on their heels.

National Review is not happy about it.

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit is 'underwhelmed'.

John Hinderaker at Powerline doesn't like it either citing Republican's abysmal record with 'stealth nominees', e.g., Souter, Kennedy.

One of the great strengths of this President is he does absolutely what he thinks is right and to hell with the conventional wisdom. He also astounds friend and foe alike - John Roberts was a pretty big surprise and this is a bigger one. She's a highly regarded lawyer but has never been a judge and has virtually no paper trail. It will be hard for the Democrats to filibuster which probably had some bearing on the President's thinking but less so than most would assume I'd imagine.

Miers was Bush's point person in the SCOTUS selection process - as was Dick Cheney for VP - well that didn't work out too badly.

Here's a funny from Tim Graham at the Corner:

You know that you've been caught flat-footed in the White House press corps when you're left filling air like NBC's Kelly O'Donnell this morning, who guessed that Bush and Miers had formed a one-on-one "bond" over clearing brush at the ranch. Miers, she said was athletic, "very physical." In the last administration, you couldn't use the terms "one-on-one bond" and "very physical" in the same passage without giggles and lawyers.

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