Her Name is Harriet

All is not well in wingnuttia. The Diaper-pail brigade has turned on its leader over his latest nominee to the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers.

George Will was among the first to cry foul. In perfect, now-he-tells-us fashion: "[Bush] has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution."

Others soon lit their torches and joined Will in the lynching (er, Freedom Fire): "Withdraw this Nominee," cries Krauthammer.

Bill Kristol on the Today show, this morning: "Bush is not a constitutional scholar"...gee, thanks, Bill. I'll add that to the list.

Also questioning Bush's bone fides, Krispy-blond Konservative, Koulter on O'Reilly: "This is laughable." [Pssst...Ann, wouldya put some clothes on? You're scaring the wee children.]

So, what's the deal? Not wingy enough? Well, the White House is hard at work assuaging their frothing base. Terry Neal reports:

"A Republican strategist involved in the front lines of the battle for the Miers nomination, who asked to not be named because he is not authorized to speak publicly, said the White House plans to regain the upper hand by focusing on the nominee's conversion to evangelical Christianity. "Conservatives love a fight with liberals," the strategist said. "And one of the things liberals are scared to death of is organized religion. And Harriet Miers is a born-again Christian. When liberal groups and others begin to read about her affirming the Texas sodomy law, contributing to pro-life groups and her religious faith, they're going to go crazy. It's already happening now."

Texas sodomy law?! What the hell? Why does the anti-gay crowd always go directly for the butt stuff? Oh, sure, with hetero couples, it's all snuggly-babies and pictures of the brood by the hearth but with gay couples it's just all-sodomy, all-the-time? Please. Give it a rest, you bloody hypocrites.

While I have no reason to doubt that Miers is a real-deal born-again, I can see why the religious right is throwing fits. They want a showdown and--for now--they're not going to get their Justice Sunday. In a small, small, small way, I feel kinda sorry for the rank-in-file nuts; they feel betrayed. They're learning the hard way that Rove used evangelicals as a bank machine.

So why nominate Harriet? Part of me thinks that Bush couldn't give two shits if anything happened to Roe or gay-marriage or any of those things--why should he care? He's not up
for re-election. What does he care about? Himself. His Poppy. His cabal. NYT's Maureen Dowd made some important observations about this:

"In 1998, during his re-election race for governor, [Harriet] handled the first questions about whether Mr. Bush had received favorable treatment to get into the Texas Air National Guard to avoid the draft. Though the former Democrat once gave a grand to Al Gore in '88, she passed the loyalty test for W. during the Bush v. Gore standoff in 2000, when she recruited conservative lawyers to work for the Bush scion in Tallahassee."

Basically, W knows that Harriet's got his back. Just for shits and giggles, try this exercise: think Nixon. Think Watergate. Think Iran-Contra. What does the Supreme Court have to do with any of that? Check out Robert Parry's latest, "Making Sense of the Miers Nomination."

...and Parry does. Make sense, I mean.