No Buyers for Miers

AP

''Apparently, Ms. Miers did not satisfy those who want to pack the Supreme Court with rigid ideologues.'' Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid

So Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination for the Supreme Court today. Why is anybody surprised? She was not only stunningly unqualified for the position, but was also staggeringly unprepared for the process.

If cronyism was Miers' cross to bear, it should also have been her salvation. A game plan should have been in place, she should have been prepped and draped and fully vaccinated by the Bush spin doctors. Instead the administration, under fire themselves from so many fronts, left her to die on the table.

Let's face it, Miers' nomination was dead from the jump. Surely the Bush Bandits never expected her to get out alive. She was a placeholder, not a viable candidate. She knows where the bodies are buried, maybe she helped shovel some of them under. A Supreme Court nominee must be an open book. And Miers' Executive Privilege cover would never hold up under the demanding exploration of confirmation hearings.

Many pundits have said all along she'd be forced to withdraw before the hearings began. It gives me scant comfort to be among them. Why? Because it wasn't Us who derailed her, it was Them. Radical Right Wingnuts who feared she wasn't one of Them at all. Which is a pretty scary thought.

Robert Bork's nomination by President Reagan was undone by one of Us, and for good reason. Ted Kennedy summed it up in a rousing speech on the Senate floor. "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, children could not be taught about evolution."

Everything Kennedy claimed Bork would do is everything the Right feared Miers wouldn't. What a message. Bad enough in 1987. Downright horrifying in 2005.

What scares me even more is this: if Harriet Miers couldn't even make it to the confirmation hearings as a trial balloon, who in hell will be the real nominee? I fear it could be the Hindenberg.