Here is my three-hours of sleep, no time to digest, initial analysis of what the Meirs withdrawal means.

I’ve been predicting that 2006 is going to be a swing election like 1974 and 1994. The humiliating defeat of Harriet Meirs is symptomatic of an institutional rot within the GOP. In many ways, it reminds me of the demise of HillaryCare, and I think it augurs very badly for the GOP in next week’s, and next year’s elections.

Below the fold, I’ll discuss strategies and predictions:

First I want to talk a little bit about how the Democrats handled this, and how they are reacting right now.

Harry Reid apparently floated Harriet Meirs name, and then did his best to make the nomination look like it had bipartisan support. Ironically, this badly weakened Meirs chances. The GOP never attempted to revive Meirs by pointing to the support she had from across the aisle. I don’t know whether Reid is a genius or an idiot, but no one with any sense would have genuinely thought Meirs was a good nominee. It fed into the post-Katrina notion that this administration is more about loyalty and cronyism than it is about qualifications and competency.

Once it became clear just how bad a selection Meirs was, it was easy to step back and let the Republicans devour themselves. And now that she has withdrawn, it is easy to blame the Republican’s right wing for sliming a nice lady and imposing a litmus test on Supreme Court justices. But, the price of doing so is losing an opportunity to pile on and reinforce the cronyism of the administration.

I can see the logic of the Democrats’ approach. We are trying to lay the groundwork to oppose an even more extreme nomination. But, this might be a mistake, and I’ll explain why below.

In some ways, the withdrawal of Meirs is like the breach of a levee protecting the White House. It’s like someone has kicked in the door, and the floodwaters are flowing in. This is, by far, the biggest defeat of the Bush presidency, and it came at the hands of his own most ardent supporters. But it didn’t happen in a vacuum. The President fully expects his most trusted adviser to be indicted tomorrow. There may be talks of impeachment for his Vice-President, or Cheney may come under pressure to resign. It is not inconceivable that Bush might come under pressure to resign. He is going to need all the support he can find, and he cannot afford to alienate his base at this time.

In my opinion, he has no choice but to nominate an unambiguously anti-Roe candidate to replace Meirs. He will care less whether that nominee actually gets confirmed, than he will whether it leads his base to rally to his side in the Plamegate fallout. He is in survival mode now.

The best way to prevent the confirmation of Bush’s life-raft wingnut nominee, is to further weaken the Bush presidency. Attack the corruption and cronyism, and not the far right nature of his supporters. If we allow this fight of the next nominee to be a strictly ideological fight, we will help rally the support the President so desperately needs, and we don’t have the numbers to win the vote.

A wildcard here, is the make-up of the Judiciary Committee. Since the Chairman, Arlen Specter, is pro-choice, he will have a very difficult time voting for an unambiguously anti-Roe nominee. A blatant anti-Roe nominee will have a harder time getting out of the committee than they will have winning on the Senate floor.

Specter will come under mindbending pressure from both sides. He may vote against the nominee, but allow the vote to go to the full Senate without the recommendation of the Judiciary Committee.

It’s complicated. And it is not clear what the best strategy is for the Democrats. The strategy they have chosen is going to further polarize the country, but it cannot be ignored that the Dems are acting pre-emptively to what they expect will be a very polarizing nomination.

We will see whether they have taken the right path, and whether they have the pro-choice unity to wage an all out ideological battle over women’s rights. I hope so.