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Judiciary Questions Dobson, Bauer on Miers
Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), their respective party leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, are asking conservative leaders about conversations they had with White House officials regarding the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
Two conservatives who have been questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee include Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, and Gary Bauer, head of Campaign for Working Families.
Story Continues Below Both are said to have participated in an October 3 conference call with White House officials.
In the phone conversation, Dobson claimed to have received assurances from Karl Rove that Miers would be a solid conservative justice.
Speaking on his radio show on October 11, Dobson said Rove told him things he "probably shouldn’t know” that led him to believe Miers "will be a good justice.”
Dobson later revealed that matters he "shouldn’t know” referred to the fact that Miers nomination had yet to be announced and that he had been privy to that decision.
But some on Capitol Hill are not buying the explanation.
"If Dr. Dobson shouldn’t have known about it,” Sen. Specter said, as reported by Roll Call, "I sure want to know what it is he shouldn’t have known, and I intend to find out.”
Specter’s chief counsel has sent Dobson a letter asking exactly what White House officials have told him about Miers.
Bauer, meanwhile, released a mass e-mail yesterday telling supporters he had been interviewed by committee staff regarding the October 3 conference call.
He denied participants were told how Miers would vote on abortion cases, and blasted the committee for questioning social conservatives but not questioning liberal activists.
The Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, who obtained notes of the teleconference from one of the participants, wrote that friends of Miers, two Texas judges, we asked point blank if she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. They indicated she would.
"As of now,” Bauer wrote, "Dr. Dobson may be dragged up to the hearing with me and others. Meanwhile, no one on the Left, not the ACLU or the abortion-on-demand crowd or the homosexual rights groups, is being threatened by the committee.”
As the Senate inquiry into Miers intensifies, conservative activists are ramping up efforts to stop the Miers nomination.
Phyllis Schlafly has helped form WithdrawMiers.org, an aptly named organization described as a "clearing house for those who believe Harriet Miers should withdraw her nomination.”
One-time Bush speechwriter David Frum has joined with Mona Charen and Linda Chavez to form Americans for Better Justice, yet another group dedicated to defeating the Miers nomination.
Frum claims on his blog that the group is raising funds to run ads to appear on "Special Report with Brit Hume,” Fox and Friends, and the Rush Limbaugh program, among other places. Frum has also moved his anti-Miers petition to the Americans for Better Justice Web site.
Ken Connor, chairman of the Center for a Just Society and former president of the Family Research Council, summarized the reasoning for the conservative dissent in a statement released to the Washington Post: "The president promised to nominate jurists in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas,” Connor wrote. "To date, there is no objective evidence confirming that Ms. Miers holds a judicial philosophy consistent with those two justices.”
Editor's note:
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