"It is a reasonable question actually: who was the last white conservative southern protestant appointed to SCOTUS?"
In the last 50 years, only four SCOTUS justices were Southerners: Abe Fortas, Lewis Powell, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Clarence Thomas.
Here is a link to an excellent website that has brief biographies on every SCOTUS justice. It's well worth comparing them, pre-nomination, to Ms. Miers. No two lives are ever lived exactly the same, but Ms. Miers' resume is very comparable to many SCOTUS justices at the time they were nominated.
For example, of the 17 Chief Justices to date, only five had served as a judge prior to their nomination to the court.
Our first Chief Justice, John Jay, was George Washington's "crony." In those days, no one rose in life without being someone else's "crony."
Our fifth Chief Justice, Roger Brooke Taney, was Andrew Jackson's "crony." Jackson used a recess appointment to make Taney Secretary of the Treasury. When the recess appointment expired, Jackson formally submitted Taney's nomination for Sec. Treasury, and the senate voted him down. Jackson nominated Taney as an associate justice of the SCOTUS, and again the senate declined to confirm him. Finally, Jackson nominated Taney to be Chief Justice and the senate confirmed him.
Our eighth Chief Justice, Melville Weston Fuller, had a resume not too dissimilar from that of Harriet Miers before he was nominated by Grover Cleveland in 1888.
There have been 109 individuals who have served (or are serving) on the SCOTUS. They came from a wide range of backgrounds and life experiences. Only a minority of them went to an elite law school. Forty-three never served as a judge in any capacity prior to their nominations.
BTW, I included Sandra Day O'Connor as one of the four Southerners in the last 50 years because she was born in El Paso, Texas. However, she lived in Arizona a long time before her SCOTUS nomination.
Thank you for that link and for your brilliant posts. I will pour over it while I eat my lunch.