[Mb-civic] Split on Right a Chance, Choice for Democrats - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Split on Right a Chance, Choice for Democrats
Fate of Miers Vote Held in the Balance

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 16, 2005; Page A04

The conservatives' noisy split over the Harriet Miers Supreme Court 
nomination has largely obscured the fact that Senate Democrats could 
control her fate in a way that was never possible in the confirmation 
battle over Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

While the turmoil on the right offers Democrats a tantalizing 
opportunity, party strategists said, it also will confront them with a 
difficult choice: Confirm a conservative with close ties to President 
Bush, or oppose her and join ranks with hard-right activists who 
historically are their archenemies.

For now, Democrats and liberal groups have been content to stay mostly 
quiet and watch Bush tangle with a restless corps of usually supportive 
conservatives who oppose Miers's nomination. But with Senate Judiciary 
Committee hearings beginning next month, Democrats acknowledge they will 
eventually have to move off the sidelines and begin making a case for or 
against the president's personal lawyer and White House counsel.

That decision will be far more difficult -- and decisive -- if the 
conservative schism persists and prompts a handful of Republicans 
ultimately to oppose Miers's confirmation. If six of the Senate's 55 
Republicans do so, the nomination would fail if all 44 Democrats and the 
chamber's Democratic-leaning independent also voted nay.

Such solidarity may be improbable, considering that Senate Democrats 
split 22-22 on Roberts's confirmation. But the curious dynamics of the 
Miers nomination are expanding the range of realistic possibilities.

All 55 GOP senators voted to confirm Roberts as chief justice, making 
Democrats' votes irrelevant to his fate. But several Republicans are 
holding out the possibility of opposing Miers, meaning that the 
Democrats conceivably could determine whether she joins the court.

The strategy for now is "to not interrupt the argument that's going on 
in the Republican camp," said Joel P. Johnson, a lobbyist and former 
Clinton administration aide with close ties to Democratic senators. "But 
as we get closer to the hearings, and if this thing moves to a 
confirmation vote, I think it's going to begin to occur to people that 
this person who is completely devoted to the president is not very 
likely to let the president down."

Such a conclusion, he said, would incline most Democrats to vote against 
Miers. Asked whether they might feel uneasy siding with conservative 
writers George F. Will, Charles Krauthammer and others calling for 
Miers's rejection, Johnson said: "Not a bit. I think senators understand 
that it takes strange bedfellows to pass things and strange bedfellows 
to kill things. And they're quite comfortable with that."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/15/AR2005101500910.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20051016/3600127a/attachment.htm