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Jewish World Review Oct. 7, 2005 / 4 Tishrei, 5766 My ‘Dear George’ letter By Michael Graham
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Sorry, George, but you lost me at Harriet.
When a reporter asked you Tuesday if Harriet Miers was the most qualified candidate for the Supreme Court and you answered, "Yes…I picked the best person I could find" —and you did it with a straight face — that was it.
I'm done. Check, please. I'm outta here.
I am no longer a George W. Bush supporter. As a conservative, I have been b**ch-slapped by this man for the last time. Those suffering from "Battered Conservative Syndrome" will no doubt make excuses and find some reason to stay with this serial abuser of our principles, but not me. I have had enough.
I've had enough of defending a "conservative" president who has spent money faster and grown government bigger than any president since LBJ. I've had enough of a "conservative" who refuses to do anything to secure our borders and whose only plan to stop illegal immigration is to hand out temporary worker permits to create even MORE future illegals.
And, George, when you look me in the eye and throw me a good, old-fashioned, "I did not have sex with that woman" lie— like Harriet Miers is the most qualified person in America for the Supreme Court — buddy, you're on your own.
It's bad enough that she's hardly conservative and has no record of achievement. Mr. President, making an affirmative-action appointment of an unqualified crony to one of the highest offices of the land is wrong, no matter what your politics. It's not just a mistake. It is shameful. You should be ashamed of yourself.
The fact that you aren't is the reason you just lost me.
Again and again, watching you throw tax dollars around like a drunken teenager at a New Orleans strip joint, I've told myself, "Stick with George, because he gets the big ones right." And the biggest of the "big ones" has always been rescuing America from an out-of-control, activist Supreme Court. You promised me a Scalia. Instead, you're sticking me with a "sistah," a woman whose qualifications for the Supreme Court begin and end in her brassiere.
She's no Scalia. She's no Thomas. She's not even a Ginsburg or a Souter. She's a joke —FEMA's Michael Brown in a skirt. In fact, that's an insult to Brown, who had at least some experience as a judge, if only at horse shows.
Your nomination of Harriet Miers is an insult to the court, to conservatives and to any American who cares about competence. She's an utterly unqualified crony who has never sat on the bench, never written on Constitutional issues, never been involved in a single significant issue or overseen an important case. According to you, Mr. President, she's been your attorney off and on for 10 years, and you've never once discussed the issue of abortion and the Constitution!
Good grief, my mailman and I have had that conversation.
Judge Roberts' politically-necessary niceties about Ms. Miers aside, if the SCOTUS were an episode of "Survivor," the other eight members would unanimously vote her off the island and then set fire to the boat to make sure she never came back.
George, you have done more than merely betray your conservative supporters. You have embarrassed us. You have made incompetence and cronyism part of the conservative character. You kept CIA Director George Tenet after the worst terrorist attack in American history occurred on his watch. You kept Michael "Best In Show" Brown in a job at FEMA he was never qualified to do. And now you're giving the Dallas Library Lady a seat on the highest court in the land and telling us, "Trust me, I know she's good?"
Sorry, no dice.
Trust you? You just went on TV and told me that Harriet Miers is the most qualified person in America to sit on the Supreme Court! C'mon, George, even Harriet's MOM doesn't believe that.
And now we find out that, in addition to giving campaign checks to Al Gore, Miers was the chairman of an ABA panel that recommended legalization of gay adoption and American participation in the International Criminal Court — both liberal positions that you oppose. So mediocre is the Miers pick that your supporters have already fallen back to the "Don't worry, we'll probably get another pick before Bush is gone" defense.
Mr. President, if you honestly believed that Harriet Miers is the most qualified possible candidate, then you wouldn't be qualified to be president.
But you don't believe it. You're lying, and you know it. The question is "why?" You've got 55 Republicans in the Senate, you had a dozen well-qualified conservative candidates you could have chosen from, several of them women. Why pick an incompetent crony when you held all the cards?
I fear that, when all the layers are pulled away, we will find that your answer will be "Because I wanted to." You knew it would leave conservatives disappointed and despondent, you know she's a second-rate nominee at best, but in your heart, you are what I've always feared you were: A Bushie. A spoiled, rich-kid president's son who has spent your life doing what you wanted whenever you wanted and making sure everyone else knows it. The more people complained about cronyism, the more determined you were to shove one down our throats.
Well, Mr. President, you've certainly made that clear.
You've told my fellow conservatives and me that you don't need us. That's fine, George, because we don't need you.
I'm done. I'm off the team. I have gone from a George Bush believer who reluctantly criticized you when necessary to an avowed critic who will support your positions when I can, but not your presidency.
Harriet Miers, "The best possible nominee?" That's like saying "George W. Bush, the best possible Republican president."
What a joke.
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JWR contributor Michael Graham is a talk show host and author of the highly acclaimed "Redneck Nation: How the South Really Won the War." Listen to "Michael Graham, Unleashed" weekdays at www.rightalk.com. To comment, please click here.
© 2005, Michael Graham
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Mitch Albom | |||||||||||
