Rush makes some good points here......

RUSH: Is there a reason why conservatives' known quantities about whom the president's supporters wouldn't have questions, were not chosen -- Michael Luttig, Edith Jones and others? I mean, they've got records and the president wouldn't be facing questions he's getting today from his supporters. Any reason why those names were left off this time?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I wouldn't take this as negative on anybody. We looked at a very broad range of candidates and, frankly, I hope we have additional vacancies down the road that the president will be able to fill and some of those people you mention will be, I expect, on everybody's short list. But the president sat down and looked at all of the options and all the alternatives. He spent a great deal of time on this himself. He's convinced Harriet will do a great job on the court, as am I, and you'll find when we look back ten years from now that it will have been a great appointment.

RUSH: Well, that's what everybody is hoping. The question is: Why do we need to wait ten years? There are people that he could have nominated that we would know about now. Is there a desire in the White House because of current poll numbers or this Katrina response that just doesn't want the fight with the Senate Democrats at this time?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we've never backed off from a fight with this Congress or any other Congress. I think a good way to think about this, Rush, is that he believes that you do in fact want a variety of different kinds of experiences on the court, that for example a number of people suggested, and I think wisely, that it was important to look outside sort of the judicial fraternity for a possible appointment, that is that you'd not pick only people who've had judicial experience. Obviously if you want to go look at judicial writings and people who have made decisions on important issues, you end up looking specifically at judges. We've done a lot of that, obviously. We think in Judge Roberts we found the best of the lot in terms of an extraordinarily competent and capable jurist who has argued cases before the Supreme Court, etcetera. But we think it was important as well to have somebody like Harriet who's got a strong legal background, but who doesn't come off the bench. She's been out in private practice. She's been actively involved in public affairs for five years now. She's served ably as the staff secretary, deputy chief of staff and White House counsel to the president, and brings a different perspective than some of the other candidates would have brought to it, but, as I say, we're convinced that you indeed will find that Harriet is one of those people who believes very deeply in the Constitution and the laws as written, and that she's not going to be legislating from the bench.

RUSH: When a Democrat is president... I think back to President Clinton. When he had the opportunity to nominate Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he chose, I mean, liberals that were liberals without question, card-carrying ACLU members. They had a very strong, discernible liberal record. There was no question about them, no doubt about their activist philosophies at all. But it seems like when a Republican president selects a nominee -- and I know the president has been great with the appellate nominees, Janice Rogers Brown and Bill Pryor and Priscilla Owen and so forth, but this one has some people scratching their heads because we seem to pick a nominee here that is oriented in some way to placating Democrats. We seem to be concerned with what liberal senators are going to say about them and think of them, and so we have a nominee here with a record that is difficult to discern. What would you say to conservatives who have that fear, who really want the fight, who see the left teetering on the brink of obscurity here and irrelevance, and want this fight to just nail them to the wall and finish their dominance of this court?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think -- I guess the way I look at it is that we will have done more, this president will have done more, to change the court and in fact put on it individuals who share his judicial philosophy than any of his predecessors in modern times, that in fact we're going to have two great justices, in Roberts and Justice Miers once she's confirmed, and... In terms of the question of whether or not there's a fight, I expect there will be a fight no matter who we nominate. Look at some of the public comments already from some of the folks on the other side. It's a question the president has to sit down and make that judgment, and as I say, I think he's found a good one in Harriet Miers. I think she'll do a great job.

RUSH: Well, the early line of criticism right now is focusing on the fact..."cronyism," that she's simply a crony, that Bush is using this opportunity to reward a loyal supporter of his, and I'm... This is... This, Mr. Vice President, frankly, surprises me. This is the best they've got, and I know they're investigating her and they're going to find some things. They've got to raise money with their groups, so there will be fight to an extent. They will say some outrageous things about her just to keep their fund-raising coming in, but the fact is that right now all they can come up with is that she is a "crony," and the desire on the part of the president's supporters out there to... After working for 20 years to get to this point, to elect a president and a Republican Senate, Republican House to change the direction of this court, to avoid the liberals being able to institutionalize their beliefs in the court, taking it out of the arena of ideas and away from the opportunity to defeat it in Congress, has disappointed some of them, that they feel we could win the fight, and that we could win the fight handily and it would be a nail in the coffin of the left, and we're still now having to wait, as you say, ten years to find out -- or a number of years -- that this was a good choice. Everybody's prayers are with the president on this, but there has to be some knowledge on your part that there's some disappointment out there that there's not somebody that could be immediately rallied around, and we've got people saying that they're depressed, and they're thinking that this is a decision that has let them down and they're, frankly, a little worn out having to appease the left on all of these choices.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I guess I would take exception with the notion that somehow this was an effort to appease the left. That's not been George Bush's stock-in-trade. I've sat side by side with him now for nearly five years and seen him take on and fight some very tough fights. I think if you look at his track record on judicial appointments, not only to the Supreme Court but the appellate court and the federal district court level, I think we've picked some great justices, and they are there, obviously, will have a significant impact on the judiciary for a good many years to come, and I think we'll find the same with Harriet. The idea that Harriet is selected on the basis of cronyism makes no sense at all. This is the first woman to serve as the president of the Texas State Bar. I mean, she's been a very successful private attorney before she joined the administration, and I think if you look back, some people say, "Well, she doesn't have any judicial experience." Well, neither did Justice Rehnquist. I mean, ten out of the last 34 justices didn't serve on a judicial bench prior to the time they were appointed to the Supreme Court. You do want to have a variety of backgrounds represented there, and we think Harriet meets that test.

Here's the whole interview

Frankly I don't know what to think about Bush's decisions anymore.

I just heard on the radio that Miers gave money to Al Gore when he was running.  WTF is going on here?

Quoted: I just heard on the radio that Miers gave money to Al Gore when he was running.  WTF is going on here?

She gave money to Gore in 1988, when he was a conservative Southern Democrat.

This will be seen by both the Right and the Left as weakness on the part of Bush, the media will call it weakness and all sides will pile it on.  This seems to me like it will get Bush in more of a fight than if he had appointed Brown, that would have energized the Right and given him support among his base for the fight, this appointment gets him nothing.

I'd like to think there's some method to his madness, but I just don't know.  A few years from now we may look back and applaud his strategy, and then again, we may look back and curse his name.  I sure hope it's the former.

tag for later reading

Quoted: This will be seen by both the Right and the Left as weakness on the part of Bush, the media will call it weakness and all sides will pile it on.  This seems to me like it will get Bush in more of a fight than if he had appointed Brown, that would have energized the Right and given him support among his base for the fight, this appointment gets him nothing. I'd like to think there's some method to his madness, but I just don't know.  A few years from now we may look back and applaud his strategy, and then again, we may look back and curse his name.  I sure hope it's the former.

Bush is a puzzler.

Sometimes you think there is something more than meets the eye to his "strategy", but it never seems to work out that way.

Quoted: Quoted: I just heard on the radio that Miers gave money to Al Gore when he was running.  WTF is going on here? She gave money to Gore in 1988, when he was a conservative Southern Democrat.

And when Algore was Pro Life.

Quoted: that there's not somebody that could be immediately rallied around, and we've got people saying that they're depressed, and they're thinking that this is a decision that has let them down and they're, frankly, a little worn out having to appease the left on all of these choices.

This is why the Dems will probably win the next Presidential election.