Just speaking for myself, I never hurled any vitriol on this issue. I'm aware there are those who did, on BOTH sides of the Miers debate.
What happens now is up to the President. He made a mistake. He's human like the rest of us. He tried to avoid a fight by sending up a stealth candidate. That was a mistake, and a huge one at that.
Unless and until we force the Democrats into a very public fight over the judiciary, we'll never have a chance to reign in our imperial left-leaning court system. Just look at the Senate votes on various nominees. Clinton's two leftist nominees were easily confirmed, even when the GOP was in control of the Senate. Breyer was confirmed unanimously. Ginzburg, a radical lefty with a long paper trail, was confirmed 97-3.
While the Republicans were busy playing nice, the Democrats were busy organizing radical groups to oppose our nominees, smearing nominees, and filibustering. What's our response to this bullying from the Democrats? Is it to confront them? No, of course not. That would be "too divisive". Instead, we send up stealth nominees, EVEN WHEN WE CONTROL THE SENATE, so as not to ruffle Democrat feathers. We then cross our fingers and hope the stealth candidate, once on the court, turns out okay. But the track record on that is pretty bad. Thomas was something of a stealth candidate, I suppose, but so were Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy, and Souter.
The Democrats have defined the term "judicial mainstream" to mean leftist judicial activism. That needs to be challenged. Until it's challenged, we're stuck trying to sneak stealth nominees past them, EVEN WHEN WE CONTROL THE SENATE.
Every time a vacancy occurs on the court, the Democrats immediately run to the nearest microphone and scream that the new nominee had better not be someone outside the "judicial mainstream". Our response should be to challenge them over what that term means. Instead, we send up a cypher and say something along the lines of this: "Our nominee is not outside the judicial mainstream. Nothing in his record indicates that he has any definitive position on abortion, gay issues, quotas, or school prayer or judicial precedent related to those issues."
The problem with that response is that it concedes that the Democrat definition of "judicial mainstream" is correct, and that a judge who might not rule the way Chuck Schumer wants is some type of extremist. The Democrats control the gate separating us from the Supreme Court, even when the GOP controls the Senate. We never challenge their control of that gate. We try to sneak around the gate, which rarely works, as the presence of Souter, Kennedy, and Co. demonstrates.
The fact that 22 Democrats voted against Roberts as a replacement for Rehnquist demonstrates the level of arrogance and vitriol the Democrats hold on this issue. Can you imagine 22 Republicans voting against a leftist Democrat nominee who was merely replacing a retiring or deceased leftist? You couldn't get more than six Republicans to vote against a flaming leftist replacing Scalia. We play nice, you know.
The ball is now in the President's court. Either he'll show a willingness to fight, or he'll send us another cypher. I hope and pray it's the former.