Wha? Conservatives Dismiss Kagan As Just Another Harriet Miers (VIDEO)

Harriet Miers and Solicitor General Elena Kagan
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It may seem to be an absurd — outrageous — comparison. But several conservatives have, in the last couple days, compared Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan — the country’s first female solicitor general and the first female dean of Harvard Law School — to Harriet Miers. Yes, that Harriet Miers.

President George W. Bush nominated then-White House counsel Miers to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2005 — though he was forced to withdraw the nomination after she came under heavy bipartisan criticism for being a Bush crony out of her depth in the rarefied air of the Supreme Court.

President Barack Obama nominated Kagan to the Court on Monday. While Republicans have generally been playing nice so far, some are taking a rather odd line of attack against Kagan.

Yesterday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) suggested that Miers was, in some ways, more qualified than Kagan.

“Do you think Harriet Miers was more qualified than Elena Kagan for the court?” Savannah Guthrie asked on MSNBC.

“I think certainly by virtue of her practical legal experience, Ms. Miers had eminently more experience as a lawyer,” Cornyn said.

Then last night, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) went even farther on Fox News, saying, “I don’t see very much difference between this nominee and Harriet Miers.”

The criticism on Harriet Miers — for good or for ill, a criticism that was sustained by the American public — was that she was a political lawyer for the administration. She had no judicial background whatsoever.

Pence then said he hopes and expects Kagan will get the same reception Miers did.

The Harriet Miers nomination proved the American people expect that there will be nominees presented by administrations and by presidents who have a record, or at least who have a career of experience, where we can determine their judicial philosophy, determine their judicial temperament. And quite frankly, the president’s nominee has all the qualifications of Harriet Miers, and I think and hope and trust will have the same reception that she got.

Greta Van Susteren punctuated that discussion by saying that treatment of Miers had been “abundantly unfair” and that “no one ever gave Harriet Miers a chance.”

And credit where credit is due: Bay Buchanan seems to have started the nonsense off on Monday night, when she suggested on CNN that Obama has “dummied down the Supreme Court.”

“What makes her qualified?” Buchanan asked of Kagan. “Being a president of Harvard makes you qualified? It does not.”

“He has dummied down the Supreme Court,” she continued. “He has given two of the best appointments of his administration to people who are not the best and the brightest, and that’s unfortunate.”

Buchanan also said the difference between Kagan and Miers “is Ivy League. That’s it.”

This woman does not have any — she’s a blank sheet. The difference between her and Harriet Miers is Ivy League. That’s it. And so you have to wonder, is she truly qualified?

Even Jon Stewart is getting in on the fun, declaring last night that Kagan’s “exactly like Harriet Miers, except for the dumb part.”

What’s particularly amusing about all of this is that many Republicans defended Miers’ experience in 2005.

Media Matters has rounded up some choice examples, including this from Corynyn:

2005: One reason I felt so strongly about Harriet Miers’s qualifications is I thought she would fill some very important gaps in the Supreme Court. Because right now you have people who’ve been federal judges, circuit judges most of their lives, or academicians. And what you see is a lack of grounding in reality and common sense that I think would be very beneficial.

2010:Ms. Kagan is likewise a surprising choice because she lacks judicial experience. Most Americans believe that prior judicial experience is a necessary credential for a Supreme Court Justice.

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