For the "requires judicial restraint" side
Senator (minority) votes AGAINST - Miers is like Scalia - Senator LOSES
Senator (majority) votes FOR - Miers is like Scalia - Senator is a genius/hero
Senator (minority) votes AGAINST - Miers is like Ginsberg - Senator got a lucky break
Senator (majority) votes FOR - Miers is like Ginsberg - Senator has been had! "Trust me!"
Excuse the shorthand. There are all sorts of middle ground as they relate to Miers performance. THere is lots of room between Scalia nd Ginsberg, and many issues. But the general idea will play, using the individual calculus that each of us brings to the table.
The thing I find so appalling is the difference between Democrats and Republicans on Supreme Court vacancies.
If a vacancy occurs under a Democrat president, he will appoint a leftist activist to fill the vacancy. Period. End of discussion. Leftist senators never have to worry about whether or not the nominee will promote abortion, homosexuality, secularism, quotas, softness of crime, or anything else. They know the nominee will promote those things, and so do the leftist activist groups like the ACLU, NARAL, and NAACP. As for the GOP senators, they simply roll over and confirm whomever the Democrat president sends up, even if they control the senate. Clinton's two leftist nominees were confirmed unanimously (Breyer) and 97-3 (Ginzburg).
But when a Republican is in the White House, we have to worry much of the time when he sends up his nominee. For every Bork or Scalia we get an O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, or Miers. We have no certainty how they'll rule once on the court. Sometimes they move to the far left almost as soon as their ass hits the judicial chair (Blackmun & Souter). Other times they drift ever so slowly further to the left each year (O'Connor & Kennedy). Even if the nominee is a good constitutionalist, we still have to worry about our own GOP senators. Several of them will split off and vote with the Democrats if the nominee might actually reign in the court's leftist drift. We even have a proponent of leftist judicial activism (Specter) as our judiciary chairman. And unlike the Republicans, who generously confirm the leftist nominees of Democrat presidents, the Democrat senators form a phalanx of opposition to solid constitutionalist GOP nominees, even to the point of filibustering to keep a nominee with majority senate support from having a fair up or down vote.
The difference is appalling.