The Real Battle Behind the Miers Nomination

Since the day President Bush announced his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, criticisms from the Right have been harsh and unrelenting. From talk radio hosts to bloggers on the Internet, the interneccine attacks must delight Democrats to no end. Even the intellectual conscience of the Right, George F. Will, joined in the attack in a brilliantly written opinion piece.

What gives?

Throughout the President's first term, conservatives have been placated by the historic tax cuts, his pro-life stances on stem cell research and partial-birth abortions, his hawkish policies against terrorism and the President's general pro-faith attitudes in both his personal and public personas. Beneath this veneer of good feelings, however, disquiet, if not outright discontent, has been brewing among conservatives.

Two issues particularly come to the fore: illegal immigration and federal spending. Over the last two years, conservatives have been alarmed by the number of illegal aliens who have traversed the porous southern borders and the attendant social and economic costs associated with such mass migration. The Minutemen Project, in which volunteers monitored and documented illegal migrants crossing the Arizona border, demonstrated the scope of the problem. Yet, the President refuses to acknowledge the problem and continues to insist on a guest-worker program, which to conservatives smacks of another amnesty offer.

Similarly, fiscal conservatives have been stunned by the Administration's record deficit-spending. While much of the spending appears reasonable, namely monies spent on the war against terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq and the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, conservatives are irked by the expansion of the Medicare program to include prescription drug benefits as well as pork barrel transportation spending.

Now enters poor Harriet Miers, the President's confidant and White House Counsel. By most accounts, Miers is a centrist, a Democrat who turned Republican twenty years ago. Clearly, she is not one of the conservatives' own. She's not like Pricilla Owens or Janice Rogers Brown.

Hence, the current interneccine battle. Ostensibly, the battle is over whether Miers is sufficiently conservative for the High Court. More accurately, this is a proxy battle between ideological conservatives and the President whom they twice helped to elect and who now seems to be drifting waywardly from conservative orthodoxy on such issues as illegal immigration and federal spending.