[Map Kernow]

What is most troubling about this whole affair, however, is the way the administration has gone about trying to demonize conservatives who have raised questions about Ms. Miers. It began from day one to attack personally the motives, loyalty and judgment of anyone who questioned the wisdom of the nomination. Since then, the ad hominem attacks on Miers’s conservative critics have been unconscionably heavy-handed and will haunt the president regardless of how the nomination fight turns out.

It's going to be a long three years to the end of this term.

[gondramB]

If we can't give the President the benefit of the doubt long enough to hear what she has to say at the hearings, how can we expect the rest of the country to give him the benfit of the doubt about anything.

[RetiredArmy]

Since they are doing a Do-Over on this, can we get one for some of the other things, like the failures to veto some of those gross spending pork bills? The Let's Make Friends With Fat Ted Kennedy Education Bill? The highways bill? The fat Farms bill?

[ConservativeDude]

If you read Craig Shirley's account of RR's 76 campaign, you see that the author was a major player in key states, esp North Carolina.

David Keene has been around a long time and is a true conservative. I put some stock in what he says.

If he came out for Miers, I would take that seriously.

As it happens, he is not for her...and I think that should be taken seriously also, at least from fellow conservatives.

But...as will likely happen...this thread will soon be filled up with folks calling David Keene a stooge of DU, a know nothing, a hate filled vitriolic, knee jerk Bush hating idiot, etc., blah blah blah.

[BlackbirdSST]

Wasn't there a meeting of the "minds" (I use that term loosely), with HM and the senator fineswine and chucky the cheese eater today? Any idea of the outcome? Did they sing her praises, or swear to run her out of DC? Inquiring minds and all that. I did hear fineswine carrying the WH mantra earlier this morning, and I'm pretty sure chucky has already as well, just been out of the loop all day. Blackbird.

[Stellar Dendrite]

ping

[Urbane_Guerilla]

Keene has not heard the news. This is what Hugh Hewitt says about the Miers argument:

[I]t is an argument about who leads the conservative movement and the GOP. The president does ....

Please go to HH's site to get the context and to verify HH's opinion that the President "leads the conservative movement ...."

HH is wonderful, and I wish the President would nominate him for the SC, but this is the quality of argument the Miers' supporters are throwing about, and they really do not know how deeply insulting and offensive it is. It is just as insulting as eliciting our support by saying Miers is a Christian.

The President is NOT the leader of the conservative movement. There is NO leader of the conservative movement. There never has been, not even Buckley or Reagan.

This is just more of the rah rah rah, follow the Great Leader, you are a traitor and (insert others insults) argument that the pro-Miers folks are confined to making. Oh yes ... and, "look at all those folks who support her ... shouldn't you be supporting her too?"

HH gave this nomination a B+ as soon as it came out (and btw, you will not hear Hugh refer to his grade again, because it undercuts his subsequent "arguments" which depend on ignorance as their central premise). My sense when I read that was that HH knew immediately what a flop this nomination was, and realized the need to spin, spin, spin.

Now we have the Leader argument. Truly pathetic, and truly saddening, all the way around.

[trubluolyguy]

What is most troubling about this whole affair, however, is the way the administration has gone about trying to demonize conservatives who have raised questions about Ms. Miers. It began from day one to attack personally the motives, loyalty and judgment of anyone who questioned the wisdom of the nomination.

---

This made many of us who would otherwise be on the fence, get real damned suspiscious. You ask a simple question and get totally ripped apart? Something is NOT right here.

[trubluolyguy]

no thinking conservative really wants to be part of a team that requires marching in lock step without question or thought, even if it is headed by the president of the United States.

---

Oh I don't know, there are a few of them right here on FR.

[mrsmith]

"the administration has gone about trying to demonize conservatives who have raised questions about Ms. Miers. It began from day one to attack personally the motives, loyalty and judgment of anyone who questioned the wisdom of the nomination."

Why lie like this?

Does he think people will believe him?

[DoctorMichael]

This Administration has had a horrible PR organization and its starting to catch up with it.

[jwalsh07]

Oy vey, even David Keene has joined the Brotherhood of the Victim?

This is getting a bit out of hand.

My advice to both sides, stop the freaking whining.