RUSH: Senator Feinstein today on The Situation Room at CNN with Wolf Blitzer. Wolf said, “The Senate Judiciary committee, what’s your reaction to this development, Senator Feinstein?”
DIFI: Well, obviously, I don’t like to see a woman — I don’t like to see it happen to her this way. But it has happened, and apparently that’s the administration and the president’s desire, and Harriet Miers’ desire. I think now we’ve got to turn to who’s next. And what concerns me very deeply, Wolf, is that the right wing conservative movement believes they have a say, a definitive say on this nomination. And I would strongly urge the president to take his time and appoint a nominee for all of the people. Conservative, liberal, moderate Americans, everybody cares about the Supreme Court.
RUSH: I’m telling you, folks, they are on the run! How dare she say that the thing that concerns her very deeply is that the right-wing conservative movement believes they have a say, a definitive say in this nomination. What the hell is People for the American Way? What the hell are the NAGs? What the hell is the — I mean your question, senator, came right from Nan Aron, the NARAL gang, and the NAG bunch. Your questions are written by your ultra-left-wing liberals. This air of superiority that these people have just grates on me. It’s like arrogance, it’s one of those human characteristics I just despise because most arrogant people are a bunch of defensive people. They’ve got self-esteem problems, inferiority complex, they act arrogant and above everybody, smarter than everybody else in the room. Senator Feinstein was a bit of an embarrassment in those hearings if you ask me, her lack of preparation, personal preparation, her relying instead on these left wing groups.
But her whole point here that she says, “I’m very concerned, Wolf, deeply, deeply concerned, is the right wing conservative movement believe they have a say, a definitive say?” The right-wing conservative movement generated a four million vote margin of victory for President Bush, senator. There are more right-wing conservatives in this country than there are ultra left-wing socialist liberals. That’s the real problem that she faces. Now let’s move on to Chuck Schumer, shall we? Here is Chuck Schumer. He held a press conference. He doesn’t wait to be invited on TV. He just invites the TV cameras to where he is, and this is part of what he said.
SCHUMER: Not a single Republican senator called for Harriet Miers’ withdrawal. It was the very extreme wing of the president’s party, and that brought about the withdrawal. If the president continues to listen to that extreme wing on judicial nominations or everything else, it can only spell trouble for his presidency and for America.
RUSH: You’ve got it just opposite. The longer the president continues to listen to people like you seek favorable treatment and opinions from people like you, the bigger trouble he’s going to be in and the deeper the hole he’s going to sink, senator, and you know it. Once again the talking points have gone out. The extreme right wing has had their way. The extreme right wing out of the mainstream, yet look how powerful, trying to gin up fear out there on their side. By the way, this business here that not one Republican Senator called for her withdrawal, maybe not in so many words, but when senators Brownback and Graham make an executive privilege document request of the president and say we can’t vote for this woman without more information, that’s pretty much saying we’re not voting for her, because they know that the White House is not going to send over those privileged documents, and the president will have then been told. Hey, if he doesn’t get unanimous support from the Republicans on the judiciary committee, this whole thing is a fait accompli and academic anyway. Here’s more from Senator Schumer. His press conference continued.
SCHUMER: There was no real consultation. There was no real reaching out in discussion of names back and forth.
RUSH: Hold it. Who the hell is he talking about? Harry Reid came out after this nomination was made, raised his hand and said this was my idea. You can’t trust these people within five seconds of a sound bite, the guy’s lying through his teeth. Here’s the rest of it.
SCHUMER: Who do you like? But they wouldn’t discuss things at all. The reason President Clinton’s nominations went very well with a senate that was not controlled even by his own party was that he had real consultation.
RUSH: That isn’t why it went well. It’s because Republicans, when they were a minority, were the majority in the Senate then just as now they were a bunch of chickens, they had linguini for spines. And so Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a card-carrying member of the ACLU gets nominated, they’re not going to oppose her because they don’t want the Washington Post and the New York Times breathing down their neck. Plus, there is also this element. They think presidents win elections, they get their nominees. You get to pick them. Republicans don’t oppose because they lost the election, the presidential race. Clinton won. He gets to pick the nominees. Republicans expect the same kind of treatment from people like you, Senator Schumer. It ain’t going to happen, is it? But I remember, Dingy Harry, he came out and said, “I’m happy.” He even was the first one to appear side by side with Harriet Miers, talk about how great she was and the fact that she was a non-judge and that he had recommended somebody like this, and her, to President Bush. Somebody’s going to correct Senator Schumer on this. Lets go back to television, Fox News Channel this morning, Jon Scott was talking to Senator Turban from Illinois, and Senator Turban was asked, “Did the White House cave in to conservative pressure on this, Senator Turban?”
TURBAN: Real reason, of course, is that Harriet Miers ran into withering criticism from the right wing of the Republican Party, and the president decided to withdraw her nomination. This wasn’t about documents. It was about Dobson. And now the president has I think a major responsibility to choose someone who doesn’t just appeal to the right wing of the Republican Party, but appeals to the best interests of the American people, but someone who is more centrist and more moderate.
RUSH: Next question: “Well, many others are saying it’s time for the president to step up, show leadership, appoint a strong conservative. After all, his party has the White House, the House, and a large majority of the Senate.”
TURBAN: I can just tell you if the president picks an extreme nominee, someone who satisfies the most extreme elements of his party, I’m afraid he’s in for a fight on Capitol Hill. We need to find someone who is balanced in their approach, moderate, someone who is going to serve this country and really reflect the mainstream values of America.
RUSH: Another thing I’m sick of is hearing these people claim they represent the mainstream values of this country — abortion, partial-birth abortion, everything else that they stand for, culturally and socially, getting Christmas out of the public square, all these things — mainstream, my foot, folks! The fact of the matter is that whoever the president nominates that these people would call extreme right wing have been some of the most qualified, most tested, and most accomplished people in the whole history of judicial jurisprudence. And a lot of people are looking forwarded to it, and they know it, and they are running scared because they have seen not what they thought was a conservative crackup, they have seen a conservative crackdown and they know that we’re here. And when we’re here, they don’t get what they want.
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Let’s move on in the audio sound bites here. You may as well hear. It’s like going back to the first grade, but we may as well listen to Barbara Boxer. She was on the Fox News Channel this morning, and Brigitte Quinn was the anchorette info babe. Said, “Senator Boxer, you believe that the documents, that was the key issue that led to the withdrawal of Harriet Miers, or what was behind it?”
BOXER: I don’t think the documents had a thing to do with the withdrawal. As a matter of fact, that was laid out by the right-wing press as a way the president could save face. I think what happened is you had a real revolution within the Republican Party. You had those on the far right just being very uneasy with this nomination because they didn’t see this woman as an originalist who would look at every case as if it ought to be judged by the original intent of the Constitution, as opposed to those mainstream Republicans who believe that the Constitution is a living, breathing document, and has to be applied to today’s circumstances. And I think, you know, the far right won on this one.
RUSH: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The trepidation and the fear and the honesty in that comment is breathtaking. They are worried. They are scared, folks. They really are. They’re the ones that ought to be on defense. Let’s move on. Let’s get some Republican senator reaction. Let’s go to the media president of the United States, John McCain. John McCain appeared on the CNBC Squawk Box today, and he was interviewed by Joe Kiernan. And Kiernan said, “Ms. Miers, the president is going to have to satisfy that base, he’s going to have to go far right, don’t you think that’s the point, is it time the rules are changing to prevent a filibuster, is it going to happen on this fight?”
PRESIDENT MCCAIN: I hope not, and again, there’s some very, very good, conservative judges out there that are very strong that I think would do maybe not quite as well as Judge Roberts. That was the perfect scenario. But I don’t think it has to be someone who would spark enough controversy to blow up the whole filibuster issue. At least I certainly hope not.
RUSH: So there’s a signal here being sent by Senator McCain, don’t mess with us gang of 14 members. Don’t mess with us. Don’t pull the trigger on the filibuster. I don’t know who he’s talking about. I wish he would have mentioned some of the names that he’s thinking, “some of these good judges that may not be as good as Roberts but wouldn’t trigger a filibuster,” because I don’t think there are any on the Democrat side. From all the names I know, every name I could give you will trigger a filibuster, pretty much close to it. So I’d like to know who he’s talking about. Here is Senator Specter. He spoke to the press this morning on Capitol Hill.
SPECTER: I think that this is a sad episode in the history of Washington, DC, which has a lot of sad episodes, but the way Harriet Miers has been treated is really disgraceful. And with respect to your question about whom the president should nominate, I would say let’s give a little respect to Ms. Miers for a few hours.
RUSH: What did she do, die? We can’t speculate on new names because we’re in a period of mourning for the Miers nomination? Is that what this is? By the way, Senator Specter, this treatment of Harriet Miers as disgraceful, you mean like telling her her answers on the questionnaire weren’t up to snuff? Senator Specter had his share of criticisms of Harriet Miers, but again, here we’re back to this whole business of disgraceful. This was a principled, down the line policy-oriented debate on her. It was not personal. It might seem she’s treated disgracefully because it’s such an important job and, yeah, any time somebody is critical of somebody’s qualifications that can be interpreted as a personal attack, but as I said earlier, disagreeing with somebody’s philosophy or not knowing what it is and wanting to know what it is, so many other things, were not personal attacks. It’s gotten to the point in this country we have so much conflict resolution in the schools, if you disagree with somebody it’s a personal attack, and that’s not really what a personal attack is.
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