Wordcruncher

A Lockstep Head Fake

In relation to my last essay, I’d like to speculate on the recent “rebellion” within the Republican media’s ranks. Many commenters on the left are taking some delight in watching this mini-revolt over Mr. Bush’s choice of Harriett Miers for the Supreme Court. And, indeed, it does appear on the surface as if there is some break within the conservative media’s unending sycophancy for Mr. Bush. Kevin Drum provides a roundup of quotes:

BUSH BASHING....We already know that lots of conservative are skeptical about Harriet Miers, but what's more interesting is the number of conservatives who are turning their guns on George Bush himself. Here's a sampler:

• Steve Dillard: I am done with President Bush.
• John Podhoretz: I think this was a pick made out of droit de seigneur — an "I am the president and this is what I want" arrogance.
• Peter Robinson: What people see in this is the Bush of the first debate, the Bad Bush, the peevish rich boy who expects to get his way because it's his way.
• Andrew Sullivan: Boy, does this pick remind us of who GWB is: about as arrogant a person as anyone who has ever held his office. Now the base knows how the rest of us have felt for close to five years.
• Stephen Bainbridge: I got a lot of criticism for saying that George Bush was pissing away the conservative moment via his Iraq policies....With this appointment, I'd echo Andrew's sentiment with something a tad more off color: Bush is now peeing on the movement.
• Rod Dreher: As for me, I am really, really disappointed in the president.
• Bill Kristol: It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy.
• Pat Buchanan: What is depressing here is not what the nomination tells us of her, but what it tells us of the president who appointed her....In picking her, Bush ran from a fight. The conservative movement has been had — and not for the first time by a president by the name of Bush.
• David Frum: The record shows I fear that the president's judgment has always been at its worst on personnel matters.
• Michelle Malkin: Message to the White House: Don't get stuck on stupid.
• Jonah Goldberg: Bush's instincts about where his principles should be are often right. But in this case the principle seems to be that Bush's instincts are principle enough.

Appearing to lend the revolt some kind of intellectual legitimacy is George Will’s column, in which he takes Mr. Bush to task for his failure as a “custodian of the Constitution.” To be sure, it’s an awful lot of bluster and some of it may even be genuine outrage.

However, the single most important objective for movement conservatives over the last 20 years has been the takeover of the Supreme Court. This may be one of the most important and under-reported issues in modern political history. It is because of this that many conservatives swallowed all doubts about Mr. Bush’s experience, intelligence and competence over the last five years; a two-term Republican president would have a historic chance to tilt the court to the right and undo all the perceived injustices of 1960s liberalism (which, personified by the Clintons and the Kennedys, tops the list of conservatives’ irrational hatreds).

But the Republicans’ most powerful weapon – masterfully wielded by the president’s handlers – is, as I wrote yesterday, the ideology of the lockstep. Viewing the Miers reaction through this prism, it seems less likely that this is an appointment from weakness; rather, I think we are all in the midst of a massive deception.

For the conservative media, the message filters down from on high (the RNC, the White House, etc.) and is rapidly circulated among all conservative media outlets. As an example, one only needs to look back at the coordinated and shameful attack on Louisiana’s local politicians. Once the president’s staff returned from vacation and realized the political disaster they had wrought, the response was a coordinated attack. Literally overnight, conservative media opinion shifted from uncomfortably questioning the president’s leadership (as every other American was doing) to their more accustomed mode of attacking others to protect the president.

Unlike the aftermath of Katrina, in which no one from the president’s strategic circle was minding the helm of the monolithic messaging mechanism, the Miers appointment began with a carefully coordinated media campaign – Vice President Cheney was on Rush Limbaugh’s almost immediately after the nomination was announced.

Did the administration miscalculate the conservative base’s reaction? Did they underestimate the importance of the Supreme Court to the right wing of the last 20 years? Hardly.

As per usual, the Bush administration’s modus operandi is to protect its own hold on power. Right now, the gravest threat to that power is its own legal troubles – troubles that could potentially lead to indictments and even impeachment proceedings as the Valerie Plame grand jury winds down.

Subsequently, there is nothing the president needs more right now than to have a few friends on the Supreme Court who are fiercely loyal to him and who owe him favors. Perhaps Ms. Miers would recuse herself from any such cases; however, given how reluctantly former Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the Plame investigation in the first place, it seems unlikely that she would recuse herself without strong public and political pressure.

So, how would one ensure such a friendly appointment? Given the potential ideological confirmation battles that go with a Supreme Court nomination – and the ever-looming threat of a Democrat filibuster – it makes strategic sense to nominate someone who would appear to infuriate the right. Why in the world would Democrats filibuster someone who seems to divide the opposition?

It even helps the president’s cause to have a nominee who in past donated the maximum amount to Al Gore’s presidential bid, sought support from gay rights groups and even appears iffy on abortion. This seems to provide just enough ideological cover to make Democrats appear hypocritical for opposing her nomination.

Ideology has never been a serious concern for this administration – if it were, why would Mr. Bush have run as a “moderate” in 2000? – but the hold on power is. And that is why this entire exercise is another example of the deployment of the ideology of the lockstep. Perhaps this is why James Dobson, he of the Focus on the Family fringe group, told the New York Times, "Some of what I know I am not at liberty to talk about."

In his egotistical attempt to boast of his connections to power, he has tipped the administration’s hand: This is all just so much political theatre. The lockstep march continues.