October 7,
2005
Miers in Trouble
It really seems like the Harriet Miers nomination is
in deep trouble. There are just too many conservatives
complaining. Then throw in some Democrats and you have
a recipe for a Bush White House disaster. And now this.
I just got an email from the Hill newspaper that has this
nugget that raises more questions on Miers. Check it out:
Former aide to Miers claims his Christmas message
was too Christian for her
Writing for www.christianworldviewnetwork.com,
a Christian Evangelical website, a young social conservative
expressed his frustration and doubt about Supreme Court
nominee Harriet Miers' conservative credentials based
on an incident when their paths crossed early on in the
Bush administration.
Ned Ryun is a 30-something conservative activist who
heads Generation Joshua, a group that encourages young,
Christian conservatives to get involved in politics. He
wrote correspondence for Bush when Meirs served as Bush's
staff secretary (the staffer responsible for reviewing
the paperwork that presidents review and approve).
In 2001, Ryun was assigned to write the President's Christmas
message. "After researching Reagan, Bush, and Clinton's
previous Christmas messages, I wrote something that was
well within the bounds of what had been previously written
(and in case you are wondering, Clinton's messages were
far more evangelical than the elder Bush's)," he
wrote, adding that his immediate superiors approved the
message. But Miers had a problem with it because "the
message might offend people of other faiths, i.e., that
the message was too Christian. She wanted me to change
it. I refused to change the message (In my poor benighted
reasoning, I actually think that Christmas is an overtly
Christian holiday that celebrates the birth of Christ
and the beginning of the redemption of man.)," Ryun
wrote. Ryun said he took his complaint to Ken Mehlman,
who is Jewish and served as the political director at
the time. "He was not offended by it in the least.
Miers insisted that I change the tone of the message.
I again refused, and after several weeks, the assignment
was taken out of my hands," Ryun wrote. "I was
later encouraged to apologize to Miers. I did not apologize."
Ryun uses the incident to illustrate why the conservative
base is less than thrilled with Mier's nomination. He
concludes that, "Some will probably write that incident
off as an insignificant, almost meaningless, occurrence.
And perhaps it is. But Miers purposefully sought to dilute
the Christianity of the message, thus revealing to me
at least a willingness to compromise unnecessarily without
outside pressure. That is my opinion based off that experience
and I would be more than happy to be proved wrong."
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