That’s the title of my new Confirmation Tales post, in which I recount how conservatives showed through their opposition to George W. Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers that they were no longer going to trust a Republican president’s assurances about a Supreme Court nominee. As a result, they attained much greater power in the process.
As an experiment, I have done an audio (or podcast) version of the post, so, if you prefer, you can listen to it while driving or exercising.
Some excerpts:
“No more Souters!” That was the rallying cry among conservatives in anticipation of Supreme Court vacancies during George W. Bush’s presidency. Those suspicious of the candidacy of Bush’s first White House counsel Alberto Gonzales shared a joke: “You know what the English translation of the Spanish word Gonzales is, right? … Souter.”
Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, had plucked David H. Souter from obscurity and nominated him to replace Justice William J. Brennan Jr. in 1990. Amid widespread doubts about the stealth pick, the Bush 41 White House assured conservatives that they should trust the president’s judgment. “A home run for conservatives,” declared White House chief of staff John Sununu, who as New Hampshire governor had appointed Souter to the state’s supreme court. (I can’t help but envision Sununu jumping to his feet at a baseball stadium whenever a long foul ball is hit.) …
By 2005, the conservative legal movement was flourishing. In George W. Bush’s first term, conservatives had mobilized in support of his lower-court nominees. But they were now showing that their commitment was to the cause, not to Bush personally. The very means—blog posts, coalition calls, emails, Internet petitions, and media ads—that had been deployed in support of Bush’s nominees were now being used to generate and coordinate powerful opposition to the Miers nomination.
The larger lesson that Bush would learn is that a Republican president needed to select Supreme Court nominees who had earned the approval of the conservative legal movement. Just over a decade later, Donald Trump would show that he understood that lesson.
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