Harriet Miers' Nomination: A Boon for Democrats, A Blessing for the Country

To no one's surprise, White House Counsel Harriet Miers has withdrawn her name from nomination to be a Supreme Court Justice. Key Republican senators, including conservative Sam Brownback (R-KS) and moderate Lindsay Graham (R-SC) clearly signaled to the White House her unsuitability for the Court. To put it plainly, she didn't have and would never have the votes.

But the Harriet Miers nomination has been a boon for Democratic strategy, as well as a blessing in disguise for the country. Follow me here....
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A boon for Democratic strategy, because the Miers' nomination exposed the deep divisions within the Republican Party as surely as Hurricane Katrina exposed New Orleans poverty to the watching world. On one side of the the huge, gaping and growing conservative divide stand reasoned, moderate Republicans and on the other side, the extremist fundamentalist element in their midst.

The coalition cobbled together by George Bush and Dick Cheney in 2004 with fear-mongering and innumerable report falsifications and supressions has fallen apart. While Democrats may struggle to find a "sound-byte" description for liberalism, Republicans struggle to agree even on their core messages and goals.

The Harriet Miers' nomination drove an unarmored Hummer straight through the center of the Republican party, and it will take quite some time for them to pick up the pieces of this catastrophic crash.
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A blessing in disguise for our country because many Republicans, for the first time, felt the fiery sting of a vicious "indiscriminate feeding frenzy," to quote one of my favorite bloggers (and a daily read for me, albeit quite moderate), Pastor Mark Daniels at his bipartisan blog, Better Living.

As I commented to Mark, what saddens me is that this viciousness has now expanded beyond just Democrats. The painful truth is that this type and degree of poisonous venom has been spewed for a while by the same crowd. Witness the horrible Swift Boat attacks on be-medaled veteran John Kerry, that, of course, were proven untrue. And remember the extraordinarily vicious attacks on the patriotism of former US Senator Max Cleland (D-GA), who lost both legs in Vietnam?

What amazes me is that Bush is shocked at the crude criticisms directed at his nominee. This belligerent blather has been regurgitated by these same sources for several years.

Ms. Miers was completely unprepared for this nomination, and deserved much better treatment. If she is not qualified...and I have no viewpoint on that....this distinguished attorney still richly deserved respect and civility.

The good news is that this messy episode has finally revealed a certain arrogance, mean-spiritedness and lack of decency to millions of moderate Republicans, and they are appalled. Their shock and revulsion can be the first step toward moving past the hardball "my way or the highway" attitude of the James Dobson extremist wing of the Republican Party.

And that, indeed, would be a blessing to our country that claims to be a democracy.
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Related Articles -- Let Conservatives Tear Miers Apart; Republican Pundit Compares Miers to First Dog Barney
-- The Smoking Gun to Kill Harriet Miers' Nomination: She Gave to Hillary
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