Betrayal

The nomination of White House Counsel Harriet Miers is a disaster on several levels, as a good friend pointed out this morning. At 60 she is not the long term nomination conservatives were looking for. She's never been a judge. And she is likely not that conservative. David Frum calls the nomination an unforced error, and he's right.

"You can always count on George W. Bush to get the big ones right." That line or something like it has consoled conservatives during their periodic bursts of unhappiness with this administration. And by and large it has been true. Oh, there were major mistakes, no doubt about that - prescription drugs, steel quotas, and so on - but it was always possible to rationalize those as forced on the president by grim necessity or some prior campaign promise.

The Miers nomination, though, is an unforced error. Unlike the Roberts' nomination, which confirmed the previous balance on the court, the O'Connor resignation offered an opportunity to change the balance. This is the moment for which the conservative legal movement has been waiting for two decades - two decades in which a generation of conservative legal intellects of the highest ability have moved to the most distinguished heights in the legal profession. On the nation's appellate courts, in legal academia, in private practice, there are dozens and dozens of principled conservative jurists in their 40s and 50s unassailably qualified for the nation's highest court. Yes, Democrats might have complained. But if Democrats had gone to war against a Michael Luttig or a Sam Alito or a Michael McConnell, they would have had to fight without weapons...

More later.

UPDATE: The debate rages all over. Best places I've found so far are Bench Memos at NRO and RCP of course. Some conservative groups are opposing, some are supporting. It will all become clearer by days end.

I will say this now though: Boy was I wrong. I thought Bush would pick a clear conservative that the base would love, the Ds would hate, and then slug it out. This is obviously not the case.

UPDATE 2: Dobson supports the nomination. Reaction continues to be mixed...Maybe disaster isn't the right term for this appointment. Disappointing would have been better.

Update 3: George Will says the nomination is a mistake.

Update 4: Time has some examples of her writing, rare as it is.