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http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_carlson&sid=ajuZsQQbuwl4#

With Miers, Bush Gets Fifth Vote Against Roe: Margaret Carlson

Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- What if former President Bill Clinton had nominated his White House counsel, Bernie Nussbaum, to the Supreme Court? I can hear Bill Frist now. What does Slick Willy think he's doing -- filling a job at FEMA?

At first glance, there seems to be no other reason for Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court other than that she is President George W. Bush's Bernie Nussbaum. The notion that a careerist corporate lawyer would have risen to the top of Bush's list if she weren't down the hall is preposterous.

Unlike famous self-selector Dick Cheney, no one suspects the modest Miers looked in the mirror and saw the best replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor staring back at her. Only Bush could see the ``heart'' and ``character'' in Miers that made her the perfect selection. She's been his consigliore, fixer and confidante for more than two decades, and she thinks the way he does.

The fact that Miers is a woman helps enormously. It looks as if Bush listened to wife Laura, who publicly suggested he should replace a woman with a woman. It's far more likely that Laura publicly suggested it because he already had decided to do so. The choice prompts automatic praise from some liberals, excites Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and placates Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Bush's Wants

And notice how tongue-tied a potential critic, Senator Edward Kennedy, was two days ago trying to criticize her.

Miers satisfies a number of Bush's proclivities: his inability to distinguish an insider job from an outside one (White House counsel is the most partisan legal job in government), his desire to reward loyalty and his love of surprise.

Ambitious Republicans should be on notice that the best way to get ahead in the Bush years is to work anonymously inside. It was only because the White House floated Miers's name that she was on anyone's list.

This is not to say that Miers isn't a decent, competent (she may be a crony, but she's no Michael Brown) and respected person. She's devoted to her mother and brothers, a regular churchgoer, an early riser, an avid celebrator of birthdays.

Up the Ladder

In Dallas, she broke the glass ceiling for female lawyers (although she lived the life of a nun to get there). After meeting Bush in 1989, she represented him in matters ranging from his purchase of a fishing cottage in East Texas to questions about his National Guard service.

At the same time, she climbed a steep corporate ladder, becoming co-manager of a huge Dallas firm and chairwoman of the Texas Bar Association, specializing in commercial transactions for large corporations.

She served on the Dallas City Council and headed the Texas Lottery, where, some say, she cleaned up Powerball. She moved with the president to the White House, where the only complaint against her was that she lingered over paperwork too long.

She became counsel to the president when Alberto Gonzales was promoted to attorney general. Gonzales is another loyalist who proved himself to Governor Bush by speed-reading through death row appeals in Texas and redefining torture in the White House for purposes of allowing more of it in Iraq. With her nomination, Miers has gotten an even bigger promotion than her predecessor.

Shocked Conservatives

Some conservatives are loudly shocked that Bush ignored the long list of known quantities among conservative jurists in the mold of his favorites, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. It depressed Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Rush Limbaugh was so agitated Cheney gave him an interview to calm his listeners.

What those conservatives are missing is what Dr. James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, and Jay Sekulow, chief counsel to the American Center for Law & Justice, see in Miers: a fifth vote for overturning Roe v. Wade. Bush even got Dobson's approval beforehand.

Like Bush, Miers had a late-in-life born-again moment, joining a conservative evangelical church in Dallas where she taught Sunday School.

In an interview in yesterday's Dallas Morning News, Miers's former campaign manager, Lorlee Bartos, said Miers told her when running for city council in 1989 that she had been ``pro-choice in her youth.'' Then, according to Bartos, Miers said she underwent ``a born-again, profound experience'' that caused her to change her mind and oppose abortion.

Keeping the Promise

That conversion fits with her $150 contribution to Texans United for Life in 1989 and her successful effort to get the American Bar Association to move from support for abortion rights to neutral in 1991. After the ABA switched back to a pro- abortion-rights position, Miers in 1993 failed in a bid to have the endorsement put to a vote of the full membership.

At his press conference yesterday, Bush claimed that in all the years he's known Miers he never learned her view on abortion. Dobson and Sekulow will have their hands full reassuring the base about that comment. It's one thing for Chuck Schumer to be left in the dark, quite another for Bush to say he purposely kept himself there.

Didn't he promise the base he'd turn the light on and give them a selection sure to reverse Roe?

I think he has. This time he's tricking Harry Reid.

I used to think the younger Bush was like his dad on abortion -- pro-life for purposes of getting elected, pro-choice otherwise. But I now see him as a victim of Stockholm syndrome, adopting as his own view that of his right-wing captors. My money is on Dobson knowing what Bush claims not to. Assuming Miers is confirmed, it won't be long before we all know.

To contact the writer of this column:

Margaret Carlson at  mcarlson3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 5, 2005 00:16 EDT

He is a theology professor and member of Scholars for 911 Truth (one of those on the fringe loonies they keep telling you about - you will see he is not).

Check out Tucker's new look (I am LMAO).  He is not wearing his trademark bow tie, and looks like he set his hair with curlers. 

http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=2a3290a0-4b79-4bf5-8119-b91b7dede110&p=News_Comment%20-%20Analysis&t=m5&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8063292/&fg=