I have no idea why Hugh Hewitt has attached his significant credibility to defending the Miers nomination no matter how weak the arguments he has to serve.
First of all, Mark Levin, who was once chief of staff to the Attorney General, challenged Hugh on the exalted significance he attaches to the White House counsel office, where Hugh once worked and which Miers currently heads. Specifically Levin said, "Sorry, Hugh. They're not considered the Constitutional engine that runs the government."
Second, Hewitt continues his absurd notion that the resistance to Miers will somehow do massive damage to evangelical support of the conservative movement. After Howard Fineman suggested (as have several of us at SA) that a GOP primary candidate would be well-advised to vote against a Miers confirmation, Hewitt said,
"That is simply wrong. To vote against Miers because the Bos-Wash Axis of Elitism is against her is not the way to gain Evangelical favor. The opposite, in fact."
Evangelicals are not identity-voters. If they were, Ronald Reagan would never have beaten Jimmy Carter, an established evangelical Christian at the time. Evangelicals vote issues. When it comes to the court, the issue is whether it will be empowered to settle all disputes over sex, marriage, and reproduction. They have been sorely disappointed with several nominees and are quite unlikely to lash out at those who complain Harriet Miers' judicial philosophy is unknown and untested.Contra Hewitt, conservative evangelicals are going to act a lot more like Missourians than bloc identity voters. Show us, baby. We ain't budgin' till you do.
6 comments:
When it comes to the court, the issue is whether it will be empowered to settle all disputes over sex, marriage, and reproduction.
Well, at least your honest. Scary, but honest.
James, why would it be scary that I don't want the court to be empowered to decide all those disputes?
I'm sorry, I interpreted your writing as saying you DID want it to be able to do so, merely in a fashion you agreed with. My misunderstanding.
Hunter, are you speaking for the evangelical wing of the party? I was getting more of a movement conservative buzz from you.
I'd think a fault line might be the Oregon assisted-suicide case. A "reasonable" constitutionalist might have to park his/her moral sense at the door, a crass religionist might not.
Do conservatives wish to become Men Without Chests as well, where all human feeling, belief and understanding must be subordinated to the law, which is an ass?
Wisdom is not mere logic, and there is no button for it on a calculator. God save us from "reasonable" men.
Tom, I live in both worlds. I was a movement conservative prior to becoming a Christian. In the case of this court appointment, I think my movement conservative side is doing most of the talking, but is not inconsistent with what my faith tells me.
I am speaking for evangelicals in opposition for the way they are characterized by Hewitt. He seems to think we vote like some old ethnic bloc or like Catholics of thirty years ago.
Man's law is only (at times) an approximation of natural law, which is the higher moral order. When it is not, it is an abomination.
There was nothing beautiful about the Fugitive Slave Act or the Dred Scott descision, both of which were quite constitutional.
Law is an imperfect prism through which to view the human experience.
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