The White House strategy in selecting Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court was obvious: nominate a stealth candidate who will cause as little controversy as possible. The plan, so obnoxiously transparent, backfired. Now the White House is mired in a crossfire, taking incoming from the left, right, and center.

* More Americans believe that the Senate should not confirm Harriet Miers than believe that they should confirm her, according to a Rasmussen poll. Republicans support the nomination 48 percent to 20 percent, while Democrats oppose the nomination 40 percent to 20 percent.

* Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican Arlen Specter agree that if a vote were held today on Harriet Miers, the Senate would reject her. "I think, if you were to hold the vote today, she would not get a majority, either in the Judiciary Committee or on the floor," Schumer remarked on Meet the Press.

* Tradesports, an online stock exchange/gambling-type site, lists a 25 percent chance of confirmation for Miers.

* Miers has become fare for jokes by television pundits--never a good sign. "I think Bush is going to appoint his accountant. 'The best mind I know on economics,'" Pat Buchanan quipped, in obvious reference to Bush nominating his personal lawyer to the Supreme Court, when asked about the president's upcoming pick to replace Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve.

* The Washington Times reports that the "White House has begun making contingency plans for the withdrawal of Harriet Miers as President Bush's choice to fill a seat on the Supreme Court." The Times's source explained: "White House senior staff are starting to ask outside people, saying, 'We're not discussing pulling out her nomination, but if we were to, do you have any advice as to how we should do it?'"

President Bush, for better or worse, is a stubborn man. He also values and practices personal loyalty. He'll stand by his woman. If Miers, out of loyalty to the president, withdraws, or the Senate rejects, look for Bush to spit in the eye of his conservative opposition. In other words, Alberto Gonzales, the nominee the Right feared even more than Harriet Miers, would be a far more likely replacement pick than Edith Jones, Miguel Estrada, or Janice Rogers Brown.

I bet your assessment is correct that Bush, who seems to be capable of vindictiveness, will try and openly give conservatives the kiss off if Miers isn't confirmed. For some people this may mean we should just take it and go along with this nomination instead of having to face Gonzales or worse.

I disagree with that tactic for a couple of reasons though. First, Bush has been clearly as disdainful of conservatives as his father was from the get-go. It is conservative willingness to delude themselves which has made them think otherwise. So Bush is already giving conservatives the shaft in his pick of Miers, as Will and Bork and others have pointed out. His touting of her variant of Protestant belief shows the patronizing attitude (or oblivious one) he takes towards religious conservatives who voted him into office.

Second, conservatives have to make principled stands at times even if they end up defeated and I think this is a good time. Sadly, the Senate isn't actually stocked with the sort of people who could pull this off but the proper response is the one Bork suggests in this piece:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007424

Bork writes: "It is said that at La Scala an exhausted tenor, after responding to repeated cries of "Encore," said he could not go on. A man rose in the audience to say, "You'll keep singing until you get it right." That man should be our model."

Conservatives should protest and in the Senate vote against Miers, then vote against Gonzales, and so on, until Bush gets it right. Then they should vote to get conservatives in in the next primaries, stop giving contributions to the GOP, and vote 3rd party or not show up in the next couple of election cycles if there are no real conservative candidates until the party straightens up.

It's sad to see the conservative movement end this way. And it won't be fun rebuilding it from the ground up over the next 50 years. Maybe there is hope, maybe the neocons will jump ship to the Democratic Party.

If it were only as bad for conservatives as you guys think it is. With 3 more years to go - it isn't.
Are there any true conservatives out there other than the few hardcore. Republicans thought GWB,Delay and the the like were conservative when all the while they are just politicans who happen to be on your side.
So look what The Republicans have brought us.
A constitution for Iraq
A surplus turned into a deficit
Harriet Miers - unqualified and clueless
The Gutting of enviornmental laws
The no liabilty NRA
Illegal aliens - all you want
Unlimited Presidential vacations
White house involment in outing of a CIA Agent.
The majority leader in the Senate under investigation and the Whip in House under indictment.
Shall I go on?

Rc: Peace, Love, Dope!

If you'd like to go tit for tat, the Clinton Administration's political and social maladies are too numerous to list.

Lucky he was in the right place and the right time to ride the Tech bubble to a tidal wave economy while he was getting head in the Oval Office.

Although, I guess he had his Vice President to thank for that as we all know that Gore was the one who invented the Internet.

Funny how the Dems can't beat the GOP at the polls so they trump up stories to get indictments and use the courts to get to them.

Sad.

This is not about Clinton. The Conservatives Won.
The Bush administration should be evaluated on the merits. Recalling Clinton won't help.
I guess they didn't fumigate the White House good enough.

Maybe they didn't fumigate the White House, but the Clinton's sure stole everything that wasn't nailed down when they left.

RC: You're preaching to the choir, dude! No one here, as far as I've seen, is defending Republicans or the administration. And what are you saying, "the conservatives won"? You just admitted that leading Republican politicians in Congress and in the WH aren't conservatives.

Yes but who did conservatives vote for despite a dismal first term record. They rewarded the failure rather than make a switch because Kerry was "liberal". If you voted for Bush you are getting what you deserve. The rest of us take no comfort.

RC: Kerry isn't "liberal"-- he's liberal. So is Bush, but Kerry would be worse. So I can understand people who voted for Bush in 2004, though I didn't vote for him either time. Perhaps it would have been sensible, knowing what we know now, to have rooted for Gore in 2000 and hoped for a conservative Republican in 2004, but no sensible conservative would have voted for Kerry in 2004. So what's your point again?

The point is 51% of the American people rewarded a man who failed in his first term with a second term. Now his biggest supporters are upset that he is not doing a good job. Can we get past the politics and look at the facts. If you don't do a good job we should replace you. It happened with Carter and than Bush senior. Unfortunately not with Bush junior.
Conservatives would have a ball nitpicking Kerry but the country wouuld be in much better shape.