The Opening of the Conservative Mind

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid blames the disintegration of the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination on "extremists," the "radical right," unthinking conservatives who demand "rigid ideologues on the court." But the cause of her nomination's collapse is a lot more complicated than that, and should suggest to the political left that the "radical" and "religious" right isn't the simpleminded creature it assumes. What the Miers episode has revealed more than anything else is that conservatives, many of them Protestant and Catholic, are not content to accept political choices on faith alone, and will not roll over simply because a religious bone is thrown to them.

The White House's strategy of building Miers up as an "evangelical"-Bush at one point even suggested he selected her in part because she went to church-backfired, alienating not only Catholics whose tradition emphasizes the reconciliation of faith and reason, but also evangelicals in Washington, D.C. who felt patronized. While the White House's approach persuaded Focus on the Family's James Dobson (albeit with a weaker voice as the nomination slumped) and the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land (who offered a spirited defense of Miers on "Meet the Press") to promote Miers vigorously, it did not by and large persuade activist evangelicals in D.C.

Through conversations with activists in conservative Protestant circles in D.C., I learned that the support-her-because-she-goes-to-church pitch had left evangelicals here either cold or upset. That groups with evangelicals driving them like Concerned Women for American ultimately called for Miers' withdrawal confirmed what I had been hearing for two weeks. It is also worth noting that the Family Research Council, affiliated with Dobson, approached the nomination very circumspectly, in effect opposing the nomination through a telling silence.

The truth is that Miers' conspicuous lack of intellectual qualifications--her speeches and writings were demonstrably threadbare--grated on many religious conservatives. They did not merely want a vaguely religious representative on the Supreme Court but a committed originalist scholar who could serve as an unflinching intellectual counterweight to the activists on the court. John Roberts, a Catholic who demonstrated that he knew constitutional law inside and out, satisfied that requirement.

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Faith and the Supreme Court "The Harriet Miers I Know" Harriet Miers and Her Church

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