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Call it hope against hope, but I’ve been
hoping the President’s new Supreme-Court nomination would prove to be
the cathartic event to push his loyalists over the edge. Finally they’d
see him for the radical he is. The revolutionary foreign policy, the
dangerous LBJ-like profligacy, the laissez faire about immigration (but
not free trade), the contempt for civil liberties, and the love affair
with Islam and big government—these would all coalesce in the minds of
conservatives into a composite of a fanatic, faithless to tradition,
Judeo-Christian or constitutional.
Indeed, something is changing and it’s not George Bush. A rebellion
appears to be brewing among conservatives. Not unpredictably, George
Bush has hit them where it hurts—the Supreme Court—and, thankfully, this
has been “the final straw,” the title of a
column by the brave Bruce Bartlett.
Bartlett has aimed a shot across the bows of Bush’s bastardized
“conservatism,” just as
libertarians have been doing since the absolute ruler ascended to
the thrown. The unconstitutional campaign finance-reform bill and “Sarbanes-Oxley
Act" (a preemptive assault on CEOs and CFOs, prior to the fact of a
crime); the various trade tariffs and barriers; the Clintonian triumph
of triangulation on affirmative-action; the collusion with Kennedy on
education; the welfare wantonness that began with a prescription-drug
benefit that would add trillions to the Medicare shortfall, and
culminated in the Kennedy-countenanced “New New Deal” for New Orleans,
for which there is no constitutional authority; the gold-embossed
invitation to illegals to invade, and the "camouflaged amnesty" (where
illegals are born-again as "guest workers" and then placed on a fast
track to permanent residence)—you name them, sensible libertarians have
protested them.
For our troubles, we were ousted from polite company, as Bartlett has
been. His courageous column was only part of the fusillade he intends to
let fly. To preempt his forthcoming book, “The Impostor: How George W.
Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy,” the former
Reagan aid was
dismissed from the National Center for Policy Analysis. My hopes for
a conservative coup may have been premature.
Bartlett has deviated from the party line on matters upon which the GOP
High Priests have pronounced. His dismissal tracks perfectly with the
current anti-intellectual, “You-are-either-with-us-or-against-us,”
tribalism. Adherents of this tradition judge ideas and opinions not on
their merit—wrestling with substantive arguments is not an option—but in
accordance with whether they comport with preordained positions. Or
according to who originates them. (If Nancy Pelosi seriously supported
balancing the budget, Republicans would reject it as a liberal idea.)
In David Brooks’ estimation, “establishment Republicans,” which he
distinguishes from conservatives, are suspicious of intellectuals and
ideas. This claque, now gunning for Bartlett and other conservative
rebels, is “more likely to believe that politics is about deal-making,
loyalty and power” (sound familiar?), a stance that has crystallized in
the clash over Harriet Miers. Roused by the president’s “Trust Me,” and
“I-know-Harriet’s-Heart,” establishment attack dogs charged snarling at
the rejectionists, in defense of their man and his crony candidate.
In conformity to the clan (not the truth), these loyalists have framed
Miers’ manifest lack of qualifications, experience, and mental prowess
as assets. It takes "Chauncey
Gardiner's" uncluttered mind to see the lost Constitution, or so
they claimed. Never mind that the thing is buried, and needs to be
deftly pried from under decades of legal debris. Forgotten too (or never
remembered) were Thomas Jefferson’s laudable reflections on the virtues
of a natural aristocracy. Or Sir William Berkeley’s concept of a society
governed by “gentlemen of honor, courage and breeding.” The ever-so
American idea of excellence was branded as elitist.
The problems of cronyism and Miers’ lack of a discernable judicial
philosophy notwithstanding, a cursory perusal of her “oeuvre”
demonstrates beyond a doubt that, unless genuflecting to George Bush is
a professional prerequisite, she is uniquely unqualified to sit on the
Supreme Court. I’ve waded through some of this pedestrian piffle, but
cannot best David Brooks’ appraisal:
“I don't know if by mere quotation I can fully convey the relentless
march of vapid abstractions that mark Miers's prose. Nearly every idea
is vague and depersonalized. Nearly every debatable point is elided.”
(Still no eureka moment?) Brooks is sufficiently perceptive to detect
that Miers’ work “presents no arguments or ideas, except the repetition
of the bromide that bad things can be eliminated if people of good will
come together to eliminate bad things.” If he concentrated a little
longer, he’d have to concede Miers sounds remarkably like Bush. Yet
Brooks persists in believing the fault lies with her, rather than with
her handler, whom he credits with healing “the division between
Republicans and conservatives by pursuing big conservative goals with
ruthless Republican discipline.”
Brooks has Miers pegged; her “mental style,” he says, is “Republican on
stilts.” But so is Bush’s. President Bush didn’t “flinch from a fight on
constitutional philosophy,” as William Kristol carped; he flouts the
Constitution almost daily. Frankly, Bush doesn’t care whether Miers can
tell Blackstone from Bentham because he can’t.
Whether Bartlett’s colleagues will cross the Rubicon and join him in
reclaiming conservatism remains to be seen. As much as I’d like to
believe Bartlett is a bellwether, I suspect party Republicans will bury
him, and crush the mutiny over Miers.
©2005 By Ilana Mercer
WorldNetDaily.com
October 21
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