The Black Republican

John Dickerson, in Slate, writes an interesting analysis of the Miers nomination that deserves to be read by anyone wanting to understand the Republican Party. It's important because it's very much on-target, but incomplete.

Left-wing bloggers may see the Bush administration and its allies as a uniform mass, but like all successful political teams, it's actually a coalition. At the heart of the coalition is an uncomfortable mix between, on the one hand, right-wing intellectuals, including the neoconservatives whose backing for the Iraq invasion has been so important, and, on the other, the evangelicals who turned out in such numbers to vote for a man who boasted that he was one of them. The Bible-thumbing armies may carry the elections, but they sometimes make the elites in the Republican Party as uncomfortable as they make Maureen Dowd and Michael Moore. In return, the mega-church attendees are mistrustful of the party's often secular, often not-Christian pundits and wizards.

The implication here (and throughout the piece) is that this is the entirety of the coilition. The truth is that most conservatives draw from both of these factions, plus unmentioned others - for instance, Wall Street capitalists, who aren't the same clique as the simple neocon cabal Dickerson suggests. Unfortunately, I think it accurately pegs the president as putting the religious faction as his first loyalty, and that he resents the elitist disdain coming from some members of the Ivy League Right. What began as a scuffle over a Supreme Court nominee seems to be devolving into an internecine battle for the soul of the Republican Party.

On the gut-check level, I also prefer the evangelicals to the secular intellectuals. But I also recognize that in some cases, evangelicals are far more communitarian than I would like, sometimes even to the point of being activist in constitutional law. So when it comes to the Supreme Court, this Catholic prefers to keep his closest allies' hands off the instrument that - wielded improperly - would force him to be their enemy. The best solution however, is to find men and women who respect each of our constituent factions. Ronald Reagan was so good at it, he started a political revolution. Hopefully Chief Justice Roberts will live up to his potential for emulating his old boss. Harriet Miers seems to be an unnecessary sharp stick from one faction into another's eye, and I must agree with Peggy Noonan that this is inexplicable.

So the administration can turn this around. Or rather Ms. Miers can. In her favor: America has never met her, she'll get to make a first impression. Working against her: But they'll already be skeptical. By the time of the hearings she'll have been painted as Church Lady. There's a great old American tradition of not really liking Church Lady....

The headline lately is that conservatives are stiffing the president. They're in uproar over Ms. Miers, in rebellion over spending, critical over cronyism. But the real story continues to be that the president feels so free to stiff conservatives. The White House is not full of stupid people. They knew conservatives would be disappointed that the president chose his lawyer for the high court. They knew conservatives would eventually awaken over spending. They knew someone would tag them on putting friends in high places. They knew conservatives would not like the big-government impulses revealed in the response to Hurricane Katrina. The headline is not that this White House endlessly bows to the right but that it is not at all afraid of the right. Why? This strikes me as the most interesting question.

On a not-completely-unrelated note, I'm not happy to find support here during this fight.

UPDATE: As the Civil War continues, I'll spotlight just two of the newest vollies. Fighting for the nomination is "The Most Brilliant Man in America", Thomas Sowell.

When it comes to taking on a tough fight with the Senate Democrats over judicial nominations, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist doesn't really have a majority to lead. Before the President nominated anybody, before he even took the oath of office for his second term, Senator Arlen Specter was already warning him not to nominate anyone who would rile up the Senate. Later, Senator John Warner issued a similar warning. It sounded like a familiar Republican strategy of pre-emptive surrender.

Before we can judge how the President played his hand, we have to consider what kind of hand he had to play. It was a weak hand -- and the weakness was in the Republican Senators.

Meanwhile, Daniel Henninger is standing up for supporters of the Federalist Society and the Originalism movement.

Replacing Justice O'Connor with a recognized judicial conservative--which by definition means risking an occasional nonconservative decision--would have helped restore the Court as the institutional tabernacle of the Constitution. With the Miers nomination the Court remains a political Colosseum. We'll win, but the price is a politics of permanent payback.

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