"Accordingly, conservatives, unless they truly believe Miers to be unqualified, should specify that their objections are directed at the president and not the Senate, lest they run the risk of lending legitimacy to the liberal practice of rejecting nominees for extra-constitutional (including political) reasons."
This appears to be the new spin and it's nonsense. There is absolutely no Constitutional requirement for the Senate to approve a nominee, qualified or not. To vote on one, yes. But approval is not required, even of a supremely (no pun intended) qualified nominee. If the majority of the Senators dislike the nominee for any reason, including politics or the color of their hair (just read up on Alexander Hamilton spiking of John Rutledge for Chief Justice), they are empowered to vote him or her down. There are no Constitutional limits specified on the reasons for rejection.
A Republican (or Democrat) Senate voting down a qualified nominee that does not espouse a view of judicial interpretation that they agree with is perfectly valid and Constitutional. This type of reasoning, that as long as the nominee is qualified he or she must be approved, is on a par with saying that election campaiging needs to be civil and that bringing up an incumbent's record to use against him is somehow negative campaigning and to be avoided at all costs. Rather, it's what the election process is supposed to do. Or at least it was until the passage of the McCain/Feingold Incumbent Protection Act, which was subsequently signed into law by President Bush, even after publicly stating in the election campaign that he believed it to be unConstitutional and that a President violated his oath of office when he knowingly signed unConstitutional legislation.)
That is why elections matter. That's also one of the built-in checks and balances of the Constitution. No President gets carte blanche to nominate whomever they please. If the citizens vote in a President and a Senate majority from the same party (of course, in the original document Senators were chosen by the state legislatures which resulted in states having influence on SCOTUS appointees), it is perfectly valid for them to confirm a nominee whose method of Constitutional interpretation most closely agrees with their own and to reject one who is not. It is presumed that that is one of the reasons that the people voted to ensure just that capability. And if the President and Senate majority are of different parties, the Senate is perfectly justified in using political judgements when considering confirmation. Again, that's one of the reasons we have elections. It would have been perfectly permissible for Republicans to vote against Ruth Bader Ginsburg regardless of whether or not she was qualified as a judge - her method of judicial interpretation disagreed with the stated method of the Republican majority.
The nomination of Harriet Miers should be withdrawn. There were multiple actually qualified candidates available for nomination. Harriet Miers was not one of them. Indeed, the White House has even acknowledged this in the way they have responded to the assertion. First, in response to the charge they say that those making it are guilty of "elitism". What that says is that the claim is true but that we aren't very nice for bringing it up. It in no way addresses the validity of the claim. The second tactic was to make the assertion that the actually qualified nominees had removed their names from contention and that poor Harriet was all that was left. Again, this tacitly admits the assertion and makes the claim that they didn't have any other choice to make. That they haven't by this time responded in a way to disprove the assertion indicates they can't.
The more serious claim against her is the complete lack of a record of her judicial philosophy. The best the White House can do to counteract that is to assure us that, her own statements to the contrary, she is a conservative and (wink, wink) an evangelical Christian who used to run a state lottery. Conservatism is a political philosophy, not a judicial interpretation. A conservative judge implies an activist, i.e. one who will decide cases based on a political basis. An originalist judicial philosophy can be found in liberals as well as conservatives. (For example, you will find liberals who find Roe v. Wade to be poor law and who would vote for it's rescinding - not easy to find, but they are out there.)
Justices O'Connor and Kennedy are two justices who decide cases without an underlying judicial philosophy, and as we have seen, they have "grown" during their tenures. Judicial decisions based upon political beliefs are much more likely to grow and evolve than those rooted in a sound judicial philosophy. And currently reported items already attest to the evolution of Ms. Miers' political beliefs. They seem rooted more in expediency than any deeply held positions.
If her nomination is not withdrawn and Republican Senators can not establish that she knows how to interpret the Constitution in an originalist manner and do not feel confident that she would do so if confirmed, they are perfectly within their rights to reject her for that reason alone, either in committee or on the floor. To do otherwise would betray those people who have labored for decades to transform the Court from one of political activism to judicial restraint based on originalist interpretation of the Constitution, as the President has done by violating his campaign promises to appoint justices in the mold of Thomas and Scalia. To reject the Miers nomination would also serve notice to this President and to future Presidents that he/they cannot arbitrarily appoint unqualified or minimally qualified nominees to such a lifetime appointment and also that the practice of sending stealth nominees is not now and will not in the future be acceptable.
In order for the Senate to properly fulfill their advise and consent role (and remain true to their oaths to uphold the Constitution) they need to be able to accurately judge the judicial philosophy of nominees. The hearings are now structured in such a way that it is considered unethical for nominees to answer questions on how they would interpret specific provision that might come before them. (This wasn't always the case, by the way...this too is a fairly recent development.) So, it would become incumbent on the President to select nominees with established records of Constitutional interpretation (either of actual decisions made or writings on the philosophy of judicial interpretation.) Yes, this would result in rejection of originalist nominees should the Senate not be in Republican hands at some point in the future. But again, that's why elections are important. If you want to avoid that possibility then it forces the electorate to make sure that the party in charge of nominating and approving judges is the one that agrees most closely with their own views on the matter.
* bump *
I agree with that, and have been expressing the same notion more tersely for a couple years, it seems. Ever since the filibuster got popular.