[JamesP81]

A caller to Laura Ingraham's radio show just brought up a great point. Will President Bush now nominate a verifiable judicial conservative or will he be angry at "us" (the base that didn't support Miers) and start meeting with Chuck Schumer and whoever to get their insight on whom to nominate?

Just something to ponder..

Doubt it. I've been suspecting for about a week that this whole nomination was a red herring, and that's coming from a Miers supporter. I think Bush didn't expect to get her in, but knew that it would be harder for the dems to oppose two of his nominees. So he used a decoy to draw the worst of the dems fire. Once again, Bush is proving himself to be a master political operator. This time him and Rove outdid themselves so much that even many of Bush's supporters were fooled, to say nothing of his opponents. If that's true, then that's M4D politicking skillz.

I vote for Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen. And not because they're women. But because they're good justices.

[buckeyeblogger]

Bush is very smart politically and I definitely wouldn't doubt if her nomination was a red herring, too.

My personal favorites would be Janice Rogers Brown or Edith Jones (I think Owen withdrew her name from the selection process).

[Paraclete]

Does the "red herring" have as much to do with the CIA situation as with the Court?

[cogitator]

I think Bush didn't expect to get her in, but knew that it would be harder for the dems to oppose two of his nominees. So he used a decoy to draw the worst of the dems fire.

The only problem with the strategy is that he drew too much fire from the conservatives on Miers. As someone else has pointed out, if he nominates a very strong conservative now, the immediate spin will be that Bush is being controlled by the "far right wing".

What he needs is another Roberts. Conservative, qualified, and "under the radar" enough to be hard to oppose. So MY prediction (which is probably unlike many other FReepers) is that the next nominee will not be a name with which we are familiar, but someone with outstanding scholarly credentials. Meaning: not a lot of rulings to examine, but a lot of conservative thought. That's harder to argue against because the nominee can demonstrate the necessary judicial intellectual rigor to be on the SCOTUS, but wouldn't have a record of actual pronouncements.

I therefore predict a conservative legal scholar from a law school, not a sitting judge.