Vox Populi

The people have spoken, and they have been heard.

Harriet Miers has withdrawn as a nominee to the Supreme Court, and President Bush has accepted her letter of withdrawal.

What comes next? In contrast to the White Sox celebrating on the Astros home field last night after their World Series win, this is not a time to cavort and sing and gleefully dance on the heads of our fellow Republicans who vigorously disagreed with us skeptics. This is a time to say what's done is what had to be done. This nomination was a colossal mistake. Wiser heads prevailed, the nomination was withdrawn, and now we can rectify that mistake.

President Bush has a choice to make. He can react out of anger and bitterness, and nominate someone, like Gonzalez, truly designed to be a slap in the face of the same conservatives who thought Miers was a mistake. Or, he can nominate the person we've all been waiting for.

At the Hedgehog blog, an ardent pro-Miers site, Mr. Brown writes:

* Will so-called "movement conservatives" re-join the fold and work with the White House, or will they demand even greater fealty from President Bush?

* Are they interested in healing the rift that has occurred, or will they simply charge ahead?

* The keys to success in that effort are held primarily by those who so ardently (and foolishly, I believe) mounted this unprecedented campaign to stop Miers before she could even have hearings.

I, and skeptics like me, never left the fold. Any rift that existed did not arise out of a desire to harm the GOP, but out of a desire to strengthen it.

We will be just as adamant in our support as we were in our dissent if President Bush joins with us to fight for the kind of conservative judicial philosophy we elected him to champion.

This morning Hugh Hewitt has a short note up, though surely he will have more to say. He writes:

I think Ms. Miers has been unfairly treated by many who have for years urged fair treatment of judicial nominees.

She deserves great thanks for her significant service to the country. She and the president deserved much better from his allies.

It would be instructive if Mr. Hewitt would lay out what criticism of Miers he thinks would have been fair. Criticism in and of itself does not automatically equal "unfair". The Miers nomination was a mistake, and those of us in the conservative base deeply interested in returning the Court to its Constitutional roots were not about to keep quiet just to avoid an uncomfortable public debate. Miers was treated very fairly, and I'm not sure why she and the president deserved better from us, if not out of an attitude that "the king is always right and because he said so".

The next nomination will be just as telling as the Miers pick was. I believe F. Scott Fitzgerald is credited with saying "There are no second acts in American lives." President Bush has been given a second chance. For the sake of the country, I hope he gets this one right.

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Here are all of my previous Miers posts. Here's hoping a similar body of dissent is not required for the next nominee.

Fraters Libertas wisely counsels against wasteful recriminations.

Shot in the Dark says to President Bush, "Come back with your shield, or on it".

Bogus Gold mentions the "Krauthammer Option" may have been the out here.

EckerNet recognizes the next pick can go a long way to repairing the rift.

Life As I See It says the process works.

La Shawn Barber is not optimistic about the next nomination.

Watchman's Words says victory is not complete until the best nominee is named.

linked to California Conservative open post.