CQ TODAY
By Seth Stern and Keith Perine, CQ Staff
Oct. 26, 2005 – 10:38 p.m.
With Senate Republicans indicating new concern Wednesday about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, one senator keeping a low-profile may prove particularly important to her chances.
Jon Kyl of Arizona, a senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee and a member of the GOP leadership, would be an ideal choice in the eyes of some conservatives to tell President Bush that he should withdraw Miers’ nomination.
Kyl waved off a question Wednesday about whether he has had back-channel conversations with the White House. But conservative activists opposed to Miers are looking to him to be their messenger.
“He’s the perfect candidate to come to the White House with credibility and without any distractions of suspecting ulterior motive other than we need a better candidate,” said Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration and a conservative constitutional scholar.
Kyl lacks the ambition for the presidency exhibited by fellow Judiciary member Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who has drawn a media swarm with his skeptical comments about Miers. Kyl is more senior than fellow committee conservatives Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. And Kyl, a policy wonk trusted by the Senate Republican caucus, has been a reliable Bush ally and a dependable vote for the Republican leadership.
Kyl’s Arizona Republican Senate colleague, John McCain, said he looks to Kyl for guidance on judicial nominations. “I rely on him totally on these kind of things,” McCain said.
Should Miers’ nomination get into enough trouble in the Senate that Kyl decides to be the bearer of bad news, he would be following in the footsteps of Arizona Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater (1953-65; 1969-87), who quietly delivered the message to President Richard M. Nixon in August 1974 that he lacked the votes in the Senate to survive an impeachment trial. Nixon announced his resignation a day after that conversation.