Miers is Gone...Now What?

With the withdrawal of Harriet Miers, what will Bush do? Will he feel chastened by the ordeal and go back to the list of the kind of highly qualified conservative judges the people who voted for him expected him to select? Or will he, in a fit of pique, rub it in their noses and reward some other crony or some safe minority moderate? I would not be surprised if it ends up being the latter - he seems to be very spiteful. Part of me feels that the Harriet Miers pick itself was to some extent payback for those who dared raise concerns about a potential Alberto Gonzalez nomination. He won't nominate Gonzalez because he'd run into the same executive privilege issues there, and the last thing he would want is for Alberto to have to discuss the torture memos. But I fear he'd love to name some "moderate" woman or Hispanic just to teach those uppity right-wingers a lesson.

As I pointed out in previous posts, O'Connor had a small but definite leftward effect on the court, and the court overall tilts discernibly left, so a failure to replace her with a clear-cut conservative will represent a failure to achieve a stated goal of his presidency. So the ball is, I dare say, in his court.