More Hewitt on Miers

I have to admit that I stand, more and more, with Hugh Hewitt on the debate over the Harriet Miers nomination to the Supreme Court, and I think it has something to do with polarizing filters.

A polarizing filter only allows the light waves to come through if those waves are traveling in the same direction as the filter is aligned. All the light waves traveling at some other angle just smack up against the filter and don't get through.

I think the neurological pathways in my brain are aligned the same way as Hugh's on the Miers debate, because his arguments make sense to me, while the anti-Miers arguments just seem to smack against my head and bounce off. I see them, I read them, but these arguments don't mesh with the total mental picture I have of politics/the judiciary/faith/economics/people/life, and what's important. If new information doesn't fit what I already understand (yes, I allow for adjustments), it doesn't get accepted immediately. (For a couple decades, I wondered why rainbows curve, and people tried giving me answers, but they didn't explain all the rainbow combinations I had seen. When I was given an explanation that took it all into account, I was finally able to accept that as the answer. The Miers debate is like that.)

When the announcement first came out, I was as disappointed as everyone else. And just as clueless about who this woman was. But as the debate has continued, I've been more amazed at the anti-Miers crowd's ability to dismiss Miers' many accomplishments as irrelevant to the Supreme Court and to dismiss the anti-anti-Miers crowd as somehow not up to the intellectual firepower needed to make this kind of decision.

Once upon a time, the burden of proof was on the Senate to prove a nominee was incompetent or unworthy. Now, it seems, the anti-Miers people want the burden of proof to be on the nominee to prove herself worthy of the position. This isn't right.

It all comes down to what's important. For conservatives, particularly the GOP, there seem to be two important issues at stake. The first is that we get a non-activist/strict-constructionist/originalist on the bench who will be there for a long time and won't turn into the next Souter. The second is that the GOP retains control of the Senate and the White House, so more non-activist/strict-constructionist/originalist justices can be put on the Supreme Court.

The anti-Miers folks seem to hold the first as their most important concern. The anti-anti-Miers folks (Hugh at least) seem to hold the second as their top concern. It's not that either side doesn't see the importance of the other issue, but it's about how much priority each concern is given. And I'm willing to allow my uncertainty about Harriet Miers to take a back seat (or at least not take the driver's seat) to the importance of the political future of the GOP beyond the Bush years.

With that in mind, I'll end with a couple quotes from Hugh's post today:

Maryland's Lt. Gov. Michael Steele declared yesterday for the seat being vacated by Senator Sarbanes. Will it help or hurt this dynamic candidate who has a chance to become the GOP's first African American senator since Brook of Massachusetts if the Judiciary Committee's GOP members pummel Miers over the Texas Bar Association's policy of encouraging minority recruitment? Will such a verbal blast help Ohio's Ken Blackwell, the African American candidate for the Buckeye State's governorship?

In Minnesota, where Mark Kennedy has a shot at the open seat of retiring Mark Dayton and where pro-life sentiment cuts across party lines as it does in Pennsylvania where Senator Santorum faces an uphill battle against a self-declared pro-life Bob Casey, Jr., will it help either man for Republican senators to reject a nominee who has supported the Human Life Amendment and battled the ABA over the issue?