Update: Michelle Malkin posts an exhaustive rundown of conservative reaction to Miers, "the morning after." Hint: it's pretty much a wicked hangover... Exerpts from one of many angry emails posted on Malkin's site:
I feel duped by Dubya. He can ask all he wants for his constituents to trust him but I don't any longer. He got us into an unpopular war and I trusted him to protect our national security. He promised to protect our country after 9/11 and I trusted him---although the borders are still not secure. He promised to nominate conservative judges to the Supreme Court and I trusted him & he's failed me in this nomination of Miers. I never questioned Robert's nomination as he was a judge and I liked what I read about him. But the cronyism is very revealing and arrogant on this last Bush betrayal. I have spoken to many loyal GOP Bushies who feel the same. ...
... I am very angry with the "I told ya so" comments that will now come regarding my support for Bush---TWICE.
Update 2: Junkyardblog asks if President Bush's two "stealth nominees" have effectively shoved ideological conservatism into the closet. (He also links to the Malkin posted letter to the president bemoaning the fact that apparently, conservative is the new Black:
You have lost my support, President Bush. You have failed to deliver the type of judicial nominees that social conservatives prayed you would appoint. If your choices of John Roberts and Harriet Miers turn out to be good picks, we won’t know it for many months, if not years. In the meantime you have proven to me that Republicans treat social conservatives exactly the same way that Democrats treat blacks. Sucker them in long enough to get their vote and then ignore them.
Interesting theory, and one I've pondered myself. The president's political team clearly needed the Christian right to work the phones and the doors and get him elected in 2000 and 2004. They needed Republican majorities in Congress in order to ram through the neoconservatives ... I mean Mr. Bush's ... decidedly unconservative foreign policy. He doesn't need either of them now. That's the only explanation I can come up with for what appears at the outset to be a purely political Supreme Court pick that has essentially divorced the president from a key part of his base, and from almost any Republican who's seeking reelection.
On the Court, Mr. Bush apparently wants someone who won't be fillibustered by Democrats (although it remains to be seen if the Republicans might do the 'bustering thiis time) and who is personally loyal to "his philosophy". The idea, if you buy the arguments in his press conference today, was to imprint the "Bush philosophy" -- whatever that is -- onto the Supreme Court for a generation. That is either a statement of profound arrogance or one of pathetic weakness, as many in the right wing blogosphere have pointed out. The big question for social conservatives (as distinct from the fiscal conservative Mr. Bush clearly has absolutely nothing in common with) is whether Mr. Bush's mysterious philosophy (which I take it we will one day discern but which apparently has something to do with Iraqi freedom) jibes with theirs.
Update 3: This TIME redux of Ms. Miers vast (ahem) writings won't help her with the right:
An indication of her stance on gay rights comes from this questionaire from the Lesbian/Gay Political Coalition of Dallas Miers filled out while running for the Dallas City Council in 1989. In it, she supported full civil rights for gays and lesbians and backed AIDS education programs for the city of Dallas. (Source: Quorumreport.com)
Update 4: Memo to the president: If you don't know Harriet Miers' views on abortion, how are your supporters supposed to know...?
Update 5: Even the FReepers are off the reservation. On an up note for the president, radio talk host Kevin McCullough is running an interview with Ron Key, said to be Miers' pastor of 25 years, on his web-site. In the interview, Key assures McCullough's listeners that Miers is a strict "Constitutionalist." Well that clears that up... future GOP nominees will simply present their ministers for public scrutiny, rather than some semblance of a record on the issues...
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