Hugh Hewitt is upset over the anonymous sources who have been criticizing Miers’s nomination. It’s dishonorable, he says. It’s “the lowest form of argument,” he says, because no independent assessment can be made of their credibility. I don’t agree with this view in all cases: If someone who had worked with Miers had a critical perspective on her but feared reprisals, I’d want to know about it. But his position is a reasonable one.
But it has to be consistently applied. If we don’t think David Kirkpatrick should be giving us quotes from anonymous Senate staffers that are harmful to the nomination, we shouldn’t approve when Ed Gillespie gives us anonymously-sourced information helpful to the nomination–especially when that information looks far more dubious, and the sources are vaguer, than Kirkpatrick’s. Yet here is Hewitt on Gillespie: “I don’t know who Ed Gillespie had in mind when he noted a whiff of sexism in the anti-Miers opposition. I can’t credit that argument when many of the anti-Miers gang would have been popping corks over Judge Brown’s nomination (as would I have been), but neither can I dismiss it because I haven’t heard what Gillespie has heard. I know it is a false charge if laid at NRO’s door.” I’m sure my colleagues appreciate that last comment, as I do. But I think he should reconsider whether he’s judging both sides of this controversy with the same standards.
He also, incidentally, attacks those dishonorable Senate staffers for criticizing Miers’s resume. He notes that none of them have resumes as substantial as hers. That’s true. Of course, they’re younger and–perhaps relevant to this discussion–nobody has nominated them to the Supreme Court.