While most right-wing leaders may be opportunists and cads, many of their supporters, it seems, are not quite that conniving.
So, once again, the generals are being forced to follow the army.
Turn it around: say Bill Clinton had nominated some lawyer from Arkansas to the Supreme Court–someone no one knew anything about, even though we were being told (by a wink) that she was likely to vote the way liberals want.
Would we have supported that nomination?
I certainly hope not. We would have found it an insult to our ideology and to the American system of justice–not to mention government. We would want to know her stands and to examine her background; no way would we want a liberal “sneaking” in.
Many on the right feel the same, about conservative appointments.
What’s interesting here is that the Bush White House felt it could convince its “base” to follow just by getting some of the leaders to go along (Dobson, etc.). The insult to the base is, well, huge. And so, it is having none of it.
It doesn’t matter that Miers would follow their agenda–they don’t want theirs to be a “stealth” agenda any more than we want ours to be one.
We on the left have been perplexed by what is going on, but we shouldn’t be. We are confused because we concentrate on the leaders of the right (a sorry, corrupt bunch), not on the people who genuinely believe in the right-wing agenda. So, while this whole thing makes me laugh at the Republicans in power, it does make me look a little more kindly at those poor, misguided souls who have taken all the nonsense to heart.
They, at least, are honest in their beliefs.