We were going to post some thoughts about how the Miers nomination is so upsetting to conservatives because they see it as a betrayal of their long-fought battle of ideas … but Patterico pointed us to a column by the NYT’s David Brooks last Sunday (copy here) that laid this out better than we can:

The conservative movement was founded upon the supposition that ideas have consequences. Conservatives have founded so many think tanks, magazines and organizations, like the Federalist Society, because they believe that you have to win arguments to win political power. They dream of Supreme Court justices capable of writing brilliant opinions that will reshape the battle of ideas.

Conservatives have spent two generations developing an internally consistent intellectual framework. They believe that has helped them prevail in five (yes, counting Bush 1) of the last seven presidential elections. What they want is another warrior — a Scalia.

What they’ve got is Harriet Miers, who shows no sign of having any ideas at all — much less the ones near and dear to conservatives. She doesn’t seem to have read the “Weekly Standard,” much less engaged in the fray. If she has ideas, she can’t communicate them.

Her nomination is also a betrayal of another cherished conservative ideal, advancement by merit. She may be a fine, workaholic attorney — but there are thousands of senior female lawyers around the country with those same qualifications. The only difference is that she is close to the President. That’s not an achievement deserving of nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Simply put, the Bush White House has put forth a nominee who appeals only to cultural conservatives. It’s difficult to understand why they thought they could sell this nominee to ideological conservatives; she actually looks worse, not better, with every passing day.

The final argument that will be advanced to conservatives will be that they should support Miers in order to save the Administration from another widely reported failure. But if she withdraws or is rejected, and a qualified candidate makes it to the Court, most of the Miers debacle will be forgotten by the mid-term elections a year from now.

Conservatives should stand their ground.

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Update: Truth Laid Bear is scanning blogs to tally those for and against Miers. Here’s where we come out: We oppose the Miers nomination. (You can see the voting to date here).

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2005 at 1:08 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.