My Letter to David Frum

David Frum on NRO is hosting a petition to scuttle the Harriet Miers nomination.

Now, I'm not in the "support her" camp yet, as I am waiting the outcome of the hearings. I was the same with Roberts.

But the idea of rejecting a president's nominee before a hearing is ludicrous. And moreso when it is your own party's president.

Here is a copy of the e-mail I sent to David Frum:

This petition is a stupid idea.

Just thought I'd let you know, because apparently you were serious about it. You seemed smart enough to know better, too.

In fact, the worst thing for your cause is if your effort succeeds.

You can't have the nominees you want, some already withdrew, and after seeing what you and others have done to trash THIS nominee, the remaining possible picks will see that the conservative side has just given them cover to do the same to conservative nominees. So they will take their names out.

And if they don't, but they are strong and we are "sure" about their views, Specter will reject them in committee, out of "loyalty" to the President, and he will look good doing it. I can hear his speech about how Bush was forced by far-right extremists to withdraw the name of a fine woman, and send up an ideologue, and he is going to reject the ideologues so that Bush can go back to picking GOOD nominees.

I KNOW you are smart enough to see that.

So, your only chance to get a better nominee is if Bush finds a better nominee willing to go through the process, but who has the same stealth qualities as Miers. Of course, you will just have to trust Bush that the next nominee is a good one.

So, you will reject a nominee because you don't trust the president you helped elect, and then you will have to trust him to do better with the next nominee. And he of course will want nothing more than to please you, now that you have called him an idiot and destroyed his legacy and ruined his last three years in office.

The only way this comes out at all for conservatives is if in fact Bush was totally loyal to the conservative cause, and would do NOTHING to harm it, even out of spite or revenge. But if you thought THAT was true, you would trust his nominee.

So, you are pretty much screwed. It's like you are playing high-card poker, and the dealer just told you he gave you an ace. But you can't trust him, even though he's always come through for you. You see two aces sitting on the table, and you want one of those. But if you put a face-up ace on the table, your opponent will not bet against you, so you will lose the pot.

But, instead of trusting the dealer, you tell him to deal you another card, and make this one an ace.

So, you called the dealer untrustworthy, but then expect him to give you an ace. And he only will do that if he really loves you and forgives you for not trusting him.

And you know the worst thing? There are only 4 aces in the pile. 2 of them are on the table facing up, and will never be useful to you. There are only two left. He gave you one, and you rejected it. If he gives you the other, then on the next hand you CAN'T have an ace, because you threw one away.

Bush can only send up stealth nominees. He doesn't have THAT many he's sure of, and you are willing to throw out one he PROMISES is a good one without even waiting for the evidence.

That has to be the stupidest move I have seen. Twenty years of working for the day we can get a nominee we want to replace a less conservative nominee, and the CONSERVATIVES are going to screw it up. It's like we don't WANT to win, we want to keep whining.

Sure, she might be the wrong pick, but we don't know, and there is NO WAY the next pick will be MORE KNOWABLE.

Grow up, use the brains God Gave You, and Pull the Petition.

We need this to work, for the good of the country, and the court. We put Bush in office, we have to go with him. You don't pull the star quarterback in the superbowl because he had a bad quarter.