Tactically, I think it would have been better to nominate a known conservative. The reason is that the dems now get to sit back and watch our infighting. I would rather have dems be on the defensive trying to destroy a just nomination than have republicans on both the offense and defense at the same time. No matter how Miers turns out, we have lost something by choosing to avoid the fight.
Every high school has a bully that feeds on others' willingness to get along and try to achieve their ends without a brutal confrontation. If it is utterly impossible to win, the smart man avoids the fight. But if it is possible or even likely to win, only a fool avoids destroying his enemy. Liberals will continue to come back and bite our heels until they are destroyed as an ideology. Admitting their strength and making decisions based on their strength, while appearing to be embarrassed to be a conservative, only lends the enemy credibility.
I don't see how President Bush can ever expect to tow a conservative line again during the remainder of his presidency. He has all but admitted that conservatives will lose any fight they enter. He has ceded the high ground to the dems by choosing to avoid the confrontation.
By the way, it doesn't matter if Miers turns out to be great. Bush has avoided giving a political ass whooping to the dems--a whooping that has been long over due. It would have made more sense to put them on the defensive, spewing their bigoted garbage. Conservatives only win, in the long run, by exposing dems and their vile ugliness while providing a clear picture of a better way to do things. This better way is CONSERVATISM, but to have any power it has to be named. This nomination spares us the dems ugliness, and foisters upon us our own. This is a big PR blunder. Every time the dems have Wellstone memorial incident, we gain in strength. This is another attempt by the president to rehabilitate his enemy, and is pure stupidity.
Here's another example of one of the "base" who just wants a big-ass fight. Win, lose, it doesn't matter. They want a nasty, drawn-out brawl that wears out the rest of the country and is just as likely to blow back on the Republicans and Bush as to work in our favor.
The judicial nominee is a tool to be used to beat Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy over the head.
Never mind that this kind of warfare never works. We MUST have it!
I guess we'll just have to see what we see. Picking a fight just to pick a fight is NOT why you do it. And over the past five years I am more and more pissed at the so called "Republican majority" in the Senate who has proven time and again they are so moderated in their majority and not a strong conservative majority that will act like the majority, and have allowed the Senate to be held hostage by the democrat minority TIME AND AGAIN! I'm sick of that and have NO confidence in the Republicans in the Senate. Not as a majority. And do you not remember the fact that we got Kennedy and Suiter on the SCOTUS because the real hard conservatives were defeated? Well the fact is the Republican Senate majority of today does not act with anymore authority or sense of purpose than the Republican minority in the Senate did back then. That's just a fact. If the end result is that Miers is a strong conservative constructionist on the court, THAT IS ALL I CARE ABOUT! I would like to see a fight but that kind of deliberate confrontational state of mind is NOT what built the conservative majority. It was built on doing what was right being vocal about it and standing by it, and someone like Miers with her history and personal beliefs are clearly in line with that philosophy. The idea that it would be better somehow if she was some elitist harvard grad who had been a judge the past ten years and made all the beltway parties in D.C. is assinine on so many levels.