We won't always win, but by showing a willingness to fight (repeatedly if necessary) for what really matters, we will get far more of what we want then expecting policy scraps under the dinner table.
I must say that at first I thought Miers was fine and that we would sustain less "damage" with a stealth candidate and avoiding the big fight.
Well, I've now seen that we have damaged ourselves so let's take the gloves off and have at it with a real in your face conservative originalist with a loooong track record.
It's especially important to fight when what we're facing is bullying tactics from the Democrats. Backing down from a bully only makes the bully more bold. We got into this position in the first place by years of backing down to bullying from Senate judiciary committee Democrats. Ted Kennedy's tirade against Bork should have been responded to in kind. Someone in the Reagan administration should have hit the microphones immediately and given a speech entitled Ted Kennedy's America, which would be an America where forceps are driven into infant skulls as they are being born, where sexual perverts prowl public school hallways, where criminals and terrorists walk free, and where a young woman is left to die in agony while the third rate hack politician who put her there searches for an attorney to save his skin.
The Democrats would be stunned beyond belief if the GOP ever fought back like that. On rare occasion, a Republican does fight back. Remember the stunned looks on Democrat faces when Clarence Thomas actually fought back? And guess what? HE WON!!!!!!