Hypocrisy and The Miers Case (Shields / WP)

[struggle4progress]

<snip> Who said repeatedly some variation of "every judicial nominee and the American people and the president deserve a fair up-or-down vote?" If you answered virtually every Republican senator, especially Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Sam Brownback of Kansas and Bill Frist of Tennessee, you would be more than right. <snip>

One clause in Article VI of the Constitution states, "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." So, when some quarrelsome Senate Democrats kept asking if and how John Roberts' Catholicism might influence his opinions, the Bush White House turned away such impertinence with a prepared statement: "Judge Roberts has said in previous testimony that personal beliefs or views have no role whatsoever when it comes to decisions judges make." In other words, butt out!

But by October, the no-questions-about-a-nominee's-religious-faith rule had been conveniently repealed so that President Bush, facing "people ask me why I picked Harriet Miers," could answer, "Part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion," while Karl Rove, the man whom Bush calls "Boy Genius," would personally reassure James Dobson, a powerful leader of the religious right, that Miers was "an evangelical Christian" and a member of "a very conservative church which is almost universally pro-life." Religious faith had become a reference and a credential for high office. <snip>

The Senate is not a rubber stamp, Brownback announced. But Republicans, including Brownback, had scorned and rejected Senate Democrats' requests for similar work from Roberts's time in the White House. <snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102801721.html

[VPStoltz]

1. E. J. Dionne also wrote a great piece on this very subject.