what might have been

My brother commends Hugh Hewitt, staunch defender of the Grand Old Party line, for his analysis of the consequences of the Miers debacle. Hewitt soars in a balloon of hot rhetoric, its flame lighting so quickly and burning so ferociously that I am forced to hide most of my response in order to keep it from swallowing up the screen. Click "read more" to read more.

Problematic from the start
First, Hewitt revises recent history, confusing his most pressing concern with that of the electorate.

OVER the last two elections, the Republican Party regained control of the United States Senate by electing new senators in Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas. These victories were attributable in large measure to the central demand made by Republican candidates, and heard and embraced by voters, that President Bush's nominees deserved an up-or-down decision on the floor of the Senate.

News to me, and probably to every voter who ticked "national security" on the exit polls, that judicial confirmation pushed the GOP to victory. The supposed "central demand" in the GOP platform comes 'way down on page 77, in a mere two paragraphs.

The 2002 and 2004 Senate races weren't largely about up or down votes. Consider the race between Mel Martinez and Betty Castor in Florida, 2004. First, Martinez wins the Republican primary by branding his opponent as pro-homosexual and wishy-washy on stem cell research, leading the St. Petersburg Times to rescind its endorsement. Martinez then claims Betty Castor, Democrat, is weak on terrorism, or even a terrorist sympathizer. Martinez's legislative priorities?

· Stand resolute in winning the war on terror and supporting our troops.
· Make the tax cuts permanent.
· Fight for Florida's fair share.

You'll notice, of course, which issue is missing from the list. Martinez wins, barely.

Where the beef is
The other races, especially in 2004, are similar, as Republicans ride the national security bandwagon to success. What did fresh, hip GOP senators really care about?

Johnny Isakson, Georgia senator replacing Zell Miller in 2004.

Education, Environment, National Defense, Second Amendment, Taxes, Transportation, Veterans

David Vitter, Louisiana, replacing John Breaux in 2004.

Agriculture, The Budget, Crime and Drugs, Education, The Family, Gun Owners' Rights, Health Care, Homeland Security, National Defense, Respect for Life, Social Security, Small Business and Economic Development, Taxes, Veterans Affairs

Legislative Priorities
1. I will work to build great jobs in Louisiana by fighting political corruption that costs us jobs and by making the tax cuts permanent to encourage growth.
2. I will work to make quality health care more affordable, including lowering prescription drug costs by allowing reimportation safely from Canada.
3. I will protect the Social Security Trust Fund from ever being raided and spent on other programs.

Richard Burr, North Carolina, replacing John Edwards in 2004.

Legislative priorities
I support making recent tax relief permanent because the tax cuts have been the engine for recent economic growth.
I will work to increase access to affordable, quality health care for North Carolinians through meaningful medical liability reform so that health insurance premiums will stop skyrocketing.
I have worked to reform our intelligence agencies on the Intelligence Committee and will continue to make our Homeland more secure through rebuilding and reforming our military and CIA.

I could go on, but you get the point. Judiciary confirmation strategies, important as they are to Hugh Hewitt, were nowhere near the top concern of the newest Republicans in the Senate.

Not waving but drowning
Second, fueled by his narrow, unwarranted analysis, Hewitt sails futher toward the horizon.

Now, with the withdrawal of Harriet Miers under an instant, fierce and sometimes false assault from conservative pundits and activists, it will be difficult for Republican candidates to continue to make this winning argument: that Democrats have deeply damaged the integrity of the advice and consent process.

Hewitt names no names, and throws some interesting adjectives out there. Instant? Maybe. Fierce? Perhaps. Sometimes false? Evidence, please. Claiming that Republicans can't fault Democrats after the Miers flare-up, Hugh assumes that hypocrisy isn't a valid political strategy, and that the damage from Miers will be long-lasting--which would be far more likely had the hearings taken place, and Miers, as all the initial data showed, would be exposed as a Constitutional lightweight. (Remarkably, Hewitt never addresses the now-infamous questionnaire, the best indication that Miers was unqualified.)

Up, up, and away
Third, Hewitt leaves history behind and heads for the rhetorical stratosphere.

The right's embrace in the Miers nomination of tactics previously exclusive to the left - exaggeration, invective, anonymous sources, an unbroken stream of new charges, television advertisements paid for by secret sources - will make it immeasurably harder to denounce and deflect such assaults when the Democrats make them the next time around.

Now we're in la-la land, a happy place free the actual past. Anyone who thinks "exaggeration" and "invective" are the province of the left needs a good dose of Limbaugh, Coulter, or Savage.

The foggy crystal ball
Fourth, Hewitt looks into the future, and enjoys speculation at the cost of ignoring present realities.

The next nominee... will face an instant and savage assault.... A claim of "special circumstances" justifying a filibuster will also be forthcoming. And will other nominees simply pass on the opportunity to walk out in the middle of a crossfire?

Hewitt persistently refuses to give credence to a single anti-Miers argument, instead painting a straw-man sketch of the opposition. His own observation that no senator called for her withdrawal is important. No pundit forced Miers, or Bush, to back down. Perhaps--and this seems likely--her relationship with Bush, her apparent lack of qualifications, and all the rest required too much political capital in these deficit days of the Bush presidency.

The center of the Miers opposition was National Review's blog, The Corner, and the blog ConfirmThem.com, both with sharp-tongued, witty and relentless writers. They unleashed every argument they could find, and the pack that followed them could not be stopped. Even if a senator had a mind to urge hearings and a vote, he had to feel that it would call down on him the verbal wrath of the anti-Miers zealots.

Is calling someone a "zealot" a form of invective, or perhaps exaggeration? Hewitt is so far into the pie fight that he's forgotten he's covered with whipped cream. It is hard to ignore the whiny sound, the spinelessness of the complaint that National Review was just too witty for poor Miers and hapless Bush.

Hewitt doesn't draw the obvious conclusion: either Bush or Miers is weak for folding in the face of pressure, or there was a really good reason for Miers to withdraw (other than the smokescreen about attorney-client privilege). But then Hewitt, who asked us to "trust" Bush, can't denounce him as a coward for caving to the pundits, for, ironically, Hewitt is the very sort of pundit who wants to push the president and the Senate in his own direction.

Hugh Hewitt, punditocrat
The fact is, Bush and Hewitt don't operate the same political calculus. Let's look at Hewitt's analysis of the presidential debates in 2004, and his immediate reaction to the Republican victory.

First, Hewitt's Presidential Debate #2 scorecard (the first debate, if you recall, focused mostly on the war on Iraq). When the question about Supreme Court vacancies comes up, here's how Hewitt summarizes and grades Bush:

"I'm not telling." I haven't picked anybody yet. I would pick somebody who would not allow their personal opinion to get in the way of the law. Examples: I wouldn't pick a anti-Pledge judge. Dred Scott case, which is where judges year ago said that the constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights. It doesn't say that. I would pick people that would be strict constructionists. One of us will have a pick. No litmus test except how they interpret.

C, Could have been better.

All we had to ask Miers, I suppose, was whether she'd have voted to uphold Dred Scott v. Sandford. In all seriousness, though, that "C" grade--one of the few for Bush, according to Hewitt--ought to have given the pundit pause.

It didn't. In his analysis of the election, fresh off a victory, Hewitt wrote:

After a late-night flight from the west coast, and a day spent interviewing would-be law professors, I have had a chance to catch up on the news, and I see that there is a blog swarm forming around the expected assumption of the chairmanship of the Senate's Committee on the Judiciary by Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter. The opposition to Specter seems headquartered at The Corner. Many friends post at The Corner, so I paused, considered their arguments, and thought it through. On reflection, it seems to me a very bad idea to try and topple Senator Specter from what in the ordinary course of events would be his Chairmanship. I hope my colleagues on the center-right that embrace pro-life politics will reconsider....

The Chairmanship will have great power, of course, but what matters far more than the name of the Chair is resolve in insisting that the GOP majority be reflected in the Committee make-up, and that Senator Frist appoint serious pro-life members to the new vacancies....

Senator Specter has supported every judicial nominee sent forward by President Bush. More important than that, he won first the primary and then the general election in Pennsylvania, and is a man of the party and the party needs to welcome its members who hold minority views, not punish them. The prospect that Senator Specter might oppose a Bush nominee is not a happy one, but neither is it inevitable nor, given the appropriate committee make-up, fatal to the nominee's prospects....

So, fellow pro-life conservatives, we should keep our focus on the key issues: The split of the seats, the names of the new members, and reform of the rules governing judicial nominees.

I leave it to you, dear reader, to contemplate the suggestions and the ironic recommendation that The Corner back off Specter.

Following up, Hewitt had other recommendations:

Yesterday I interviewed two senators-elect, Burr and Thune, and returning House powerhouse David Dreier. My theme with all of them was whether they felt urgency. On the Senate side, this means resolving the judicial nominee impasse decisively, either with a Democratic acknowledgement that the filibusters are illegitimate, or a rule change to require up-or-down votes on the Senate floor of every nominee to emerge from the Judiciary Committee. On the House side, Social Security reform for those under 45 needs to move quickly to reality. Skittishness in either chamber would be a disaster. Political victories of the magnitude of Tuesday's require decisive follow-through or politics will earn a reputation for insincerity even greater than it already enjoys.

Hewitt was urgent. Hewitt wanted results. No one listened to Hewitt when it counted. And, given his idealistic and unrealistic perspective on the political climate, and the way the GOP has continually misled and mistreated its most loyal voters, there's good reason Hewitt's homily went unheeded. He wants saints in office, but only sinners run.