The Machine Justice

I think it’s kind of cute that so many conservatives are expressing such angst at the choice of Harriet Miers this morning. Seems they thought that the Bush administration was about conservative ideology. Funny.

The Bush administration is about setting up the legal and institutional framework for a Republican majority for the next generation. That is Karl Rove’s raison d’etre, beyond Junior, beyond conservatism, beyond ideology.

Harriet Miers is the official machine justice, a made woman, the one whose only committment and loyalty will be to Karl Rove and George Bush. I’m sure they would have preferred Alberto Gonzales but he is too much of a known quantity to easily finesse the varying political requirements within the base. She will do just fine. She is their creature. Her purpose on the court is to assist the Republican party in any way necessary, not to advance conservatism.

Voting for business interests is, of course, a given. Now the Texas mafia and the spawn of the college Republicans have their own seat on the highest court in the land for the next 20 years. But having one on the court for the next 10 years is crucial. With the election fixing, gerrymandering, corruption and executive power cases coming before the court over the next few years, her position will be very important to the GOP machine. It may very well be personally important to Karl Rove himself. (One hopes that the Democratic senators will, at least, take the PR opportunity to extract a bunch of public statements from her that she will recuse herself if and when specific criminal cases involving big name Republicans she’s worked with come before the court.)

It’s important to recognize, finally, what Karl Rove and the Bush administration, with the help of the modern Republican apparatus under Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed is all about. They are building a political machine, not a political movement. I find it very amusing that the right wing “intellectuals,” from their ivory tower think tanks and millionaire supported sinecures at political magazines, have still failed to recognize that.

“She’s the kind of person you want in your corner when all the chips are being played,” said one friend, Joseph M. Allbaugh, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Here’s a little insight into Miers’ involvement with the Texas mafia, from buzzflash.

Update: Regarding Roe vs Wade, I think she will vote to overturn Roe vs Wade if the leadership of the Republican Party feels it is in the party’s best interest to overturn Roe vs Wade.

It’s my belief that the GOP would love to overturn it as a payback for their base, and they will “arrange” for her to overturn if they feel it’s time. But what they are most interested in is getting someone on the court who will not independently decide that the interests of democracy require that they vote against whatever GOP electoral schemes come down the pike. There can be no daylight on that. Miers can be guaranteed to do what is best for the GOP.

It’s certainly possible that the elite wingnuts are in cahoots creating this little backlash against Miers, but it was orchestrated going back to last week with Pod and Frum both public dismissing her as a lightweight and a hack. I wouldn’t put it past them, but I just have a gut feeling that they were taken by surprise by this one. This was a level of coordination that I’ve not seen on the blogs before, if that’s what it was. (I think it was more what Atrios said — they are disappointed because they wanted the satisfaction of telling the Dems to go fuck themselves.)

Many movement conservatives, whether from the Christian conservative base or the neocon cosmopolitans, really bought into the idea that Bush believes in something deeper than corporate power, cutting taxes for high earners and kicking ass. Yet, there is absolutely nothing in his performance in office that suggests he cares about anything else.

Rove, on the other hand, has the very public agenda of building a “permanent” Republican majority. That is what he’s trying to do. Period. Whatever it takes to get there is what they will do — neocons and Christian alike are just cogs in the machine.

Deep down they know the score. They sold their souls to this devil (don’t tell me they didn’t know what they were doing when they went after Clinton, Gore and Kerry like a pack of wild, rabid dogs) and now they are faced with the fact that they too have been punked.

The modern Republican party, at its core, is not about ideology or values or anything else that high minded mediocre intellectuals and religious zealots pretend motivates their “movement” It’s about money and power. Same as it ever was. Ask Grover.

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