The White House has spent much of the past 48 hours dialling numbers it normally only needs at election time. Those numbers belong to Christian conservatives, otherwise known as the ”base” for their unstinting support of the president.
But this week, that base was split in two by President George Bush’s nomination of his own former personal lawyer, Harriet Miers, as the new judge on the Supreme Court.
The uproar has further preoccupied an administration already tied up with severe problems both unforeseen and of its own making. It has tipped the White House from a malaise into something approaching a crisis, as it scrambles to shore up support it once took for granted.
Miers has never been a judge. More importantly for the right, she has no public record as an opponent of abortion, and conservatives are furious. Many voted for Bush on the understanding he would put a fire-and-brimstone moral conservative on the Supreme Court, to outlaw abortion and gay marriage.
”I’m disappointed, depressed and demoralised,” declared William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, the gospel of neo-conservatism.
”Nothing he has done throughout his presidency has drawn more fire from conservatives,” Ron Brownstein, the chief political commentator on The Los Angeles Times, concluded.
The Miers row would not have hit the Bush administration so hard if it was as robust and energetic as it appeared after the president’s triumphant re-election last November, which gave him reinforced majorities in both Houses of Congress.
The president’s problems should not be overstated. The arithmetic of the Senate makes it unlikely that Miers’s nomination will be blocked, even if the hard-line right sits on its hands. The Republicans have 55 out of 100 seats and can probably count on more than a handful of Democratic votes.
Miers was chosen because her lack of ideological footprints would make her hard for Democrats to oppose. The same was true of the new Chief Justice, John Roberts. But the choice of such uncontroversial nominees was itself a sign of weakness.
String of problems
The White House has been weakened by a string of chronic problems that have piled up throughout the year, squeezing the energy out of the administration and throwing it on to the defensive.
By far the most serious of those problems is the Iraq war. As the United States death toll nears 2 000 with no sign of a quick way out, the conflict has become an open sore that the White House has been unable to heal. A significant majority of the population now believes the war was a mistake and is not making the country any safer.
Despite the president’s constant promises that the situation is improving, the US commander in Iraq, General George Casey, has admitted that there is only one Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without US support, not three as the Pentagon had claimed three months ago.
Meanwhile, the rising tide of scandal around the administration is now lapping at the gates of the White House.
A senior Budget aide, David Safavian, has been arrested on suspicion of perjury and obstruction of justice in a bribery investigation that is also scrutinising Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, who has already had to step down after indictments of conspiracy and money-laundering in Texas.
Americans are also increasingly pessimistic about the country’s economic prospects, particularly in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the high petrol prices they left behind.
The cost of the storms has also torpedoed any hopes the White House had of shrinking the federal deficit to less than $400-billion, creating both an economic and a political problem for a president whose core supporters expect fiscal rectitude.
Different row
In this sea of difficulties, conservatives have by and large stuck by the president. Fiscal conservatives, for example, are even more scared of Democratic spending than of the president’s profligacy. But the Miers row is different.
Senator Sam Brownback, a weathervane of conservative opinion on the judiciary committee that will interrogate Miers in her confirmation hearings, on Wednesday declared himself ”disappointed” with the choice and hinted he might oppose the nomination.
That is why presidential aides have been frantically calling erstwhile allies, and putting witnesses like the nominee’s ex-boyfriend on the line.
Nathan Hecht, a conservative Judge on the Texas Supreme Court, recalled the moment in 1979 when Miers called him into her corporate law office to pray and announced ”she was ready to make a commitment” to Jesus Christ and be born again.
Bush himself walked out into the Rose Garden on Tuesday and risked a press conference, not his favourite format, to give Miers his ultimate seal of approval.
”I know her heart,” he said.
Until now, such spiritual testimonials were enough for the base, but their currency has been devalued. The president has said similar things about Vladimir Putin.
More and more Republicans are beginning to worry about next year’s elections. A Newsweek poll found that 47% described themselves as Democratic or leaning Democratic, compared with 42% Republican or leaning that way.
However, the Democrats’ challenge now is to take that momentum and turn it into political power. The steady geographic polarisation of the country into solidly ”red” conservative and ”blue” liberal districts and regions has meant that most congressional races are a foregone conclusion.
Only a third of the Senate’s seats are up for grabs in next year’s mid-term elections and only about 16 are truly competitive. Of those, 10 are Democratic, so the Democrats have most to lose.
After years of gerrymandering, the picture is similar in the House of Representatives. Less than 30 of the 435 seats are currently considered to be really in play. — Guardian Unlimited Â