Say Goodnight, Harriet...

All Loose Canon's liberal friends are in full chortle mode. They feel that Harriet Miers will split the Republican coalition. They are wrong. But she does have the potential to do something else harmful: be a mediocre Supreme Court Justice. She is not the justice we have been awaiting for years. Quite rightly, the editors of National Review are calling upon Republican senators to insist that the Miers nomination be withdrawn:

It looks as if the confirmation hearings will be the very fight over judicial principles that conservatives have long wanted, but the White House has tried to sidestep. Instead of having a nominee as equipped as, say, a Judge John Roberts as their champion, conservatives will watch the case be made by Miers, who may not even grasp all the principles or believe in them. If she implodes at the hearings, it will not just be her personal embarrassment. She will set the conservative cause back dramatically. Surely, she will be coached to say all the right things initially, but she has no depth in conservative judicial philosophy. If she wilts under questioning, the conventional wisdom might be that the principles themselves were indefensible.

A Miers withdrawal will stop the bleeding. It will seem a blow to the White House at first, but soon enough people will forget — how many people remember Bernie Kerik? — and the focus will become the next nominee. If that nominee is of the caliber and has the beliefs we have come to expect from other Bush judicial nominees, conservatives will rally around him or her, and the White House and its allies can unite in a clear fight to transform the Court.

If Harriet Miers is the nice lady she seems to be, she will insist on stopping the madness. A fight over principles would actually reinvigorate the Bush presidency. Is Bob Bork still available?