Harsh Words

Lott: 'Not comfortable' with Miers' nomination

Trent Lott states the obvious this morning: "There are a lot more people - men, women and minorities - that are more qualified in my opinion by their experience than she is," he said, according to MSNBC. He even suggested that Bush has made many good nominations but can also make mistakes, raising the specter that he considers this nomination one of them.

Poor Harriet. She was such a loyal hack for Dubya, and it was serving her well. But this latest promotion he's offered her is starting to look more and more like a train wreck.

Part of the reason, apparently, is that she was a "moderate" on gay rights while answering a 1989 questionnaire in Dallas. "Moderate" means she said gays should have the same civil rights as straights, but didn't believe that a law making gay sex illegal should be repealed. (The Supreme Court finally struck the law down in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas, to the great dismay of Bush's base.) This "moderation"--you can be gay, but you can't act on it--is enough to freak out those on the Right whose deepest fear, for reasons no rational person can explain, is that same-sex marriage will become legal in this country, and their God will become so angry with them for failing to stop it that He'll send them all to Hell.

It's worth noting that in 1989 support for repealing the law was nothing like it is now. Hardly anyone was talking about gay marriage. For a woman in Dallas in 1989, Miers may very well have been a "moderate." The question I'd like answered is whether her version of moderate views has grown and changed along with the rest of the world...