Political Capital Spent: Harriet Miers Withdraws

When the Prevaricator in Chief won his three-point victory over one of the weakest Democratic candidates I can remember, he claimed in that no-stutter voice, the one with the arrogant tone usually accompanied by the "turtle smirk", "I've earned political capital." He has since wasted that capital. "Trust me" just didn't seem to work where Harriet Miers's nomination as Associate Justice to the U. S. Supreme Court is concerned. His base rebelled, doubtlessly disappointed that the Shrub hadn't nominated someone with an agenda of 1) Overturning Roe v. Wade, eliminating all forms of contraception and dictating that sex is only legal between a man and a woman using the missionary position and not in excess of that required to establish pregnancy, 2) manditory readings of the Ten Commandments (as appended by Pat Robertson who seems to find the sixth one a bit of an inconvenience), the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount and the Lord's Prayer prior to every school day, court case, NASCAR race, high school graduation and public execution, 3) unlimited right to keep prisoners without charge forever with no access to a lawyer or the courts at the whim of the President and 4) complete abolishment of all civil rights legislation, rights to privacy, emminent domain and anything else not contained in the Christian Right (neither, nor) playbook, i. e. the Bible as amended by Pat Robertson, James Dobson and cronies, i. e. the modern Prophets.

Now I don't know if Harriet Miers is qualified for a job on the Supreme Court or not. There's no paper trail, at least none the White House is willing to release. What I do know is that the Shrub can no longer reckon that when he says jump, the radical right will ask how high. This marks the second Republican defection in a short time. Some time within the last week or so, a group of moderate Republicans in alliance with Democrats brought pressure on the Shortchanger in Chief to revoke his suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act and return fair pay to those rebuilding the Gulf Coast. If we get indictments of Rove and/or Libbey tomorrow, I'm sure there will be more defections as Republicans seek to distance themselves from the failing Administration. Perhaps that's why Miers so graciously withdrew. Had the Senate gotten their hands on the White House's sensitive documents, the link between the two potential Plamegate perpetrators (can I see a perp walk! Please!) and the upper levels of the Administration, the Shrub and the Dick, would have been exposed. Better to take the fall now than have to take the fifth later on.

For now, it would seem that Bush's political capital resembles the national budget - in deficit and sinking deeper in the hole. A caution for us progressives: Don't be too jubilant about this. The next nomination will surely represent an attempt to regain his standing with the Right Wingnuts and Christian Theocratists. We may get something worse than merely unqualified. We may get what the Radical Right wants and that will mean a fight, most likely the Constitutional showdown over filibuster of judicial nominations the group of thirteen avoided this spring. Hopefully Bush will see this as an opportunity to play to the middle of the field and appoint someone in the spirit of Sandra Day O'Connor. I fear we'll get a Janice Rogers Brown instead.

That could be worse than a completely unqualified Harriet Miers.