Agony On The Right

David Frum of the National Review Online is struggling with What [To Do] Now?:

Krauthammer and Kristol have both called for the Miers nomination to be withdrawn. Rush Limbaugh, George Will, and Laura Ingraham have expressed the gravest concern. Your ballots are running more than 15 to 1 against confirmation. (I will close the balloting at 5 pm Eastern Time today and post results tonight.)

But all this raises the question: What Now?

* * * *

The serious defense is offered by Hugh Hewitt: concern for the president's political position. Despite Kristol and Krauthammer's wise advice, President Bush will not voluntarily withdraw this nomination. That would be utterly out of character. So, as Hewitt argues,

"Continuing the assault on Miers means committing to her defeat...." And, according to Hewitt, a defeat of the Miers nomination by Republicans would be a self-destructive act.

These words need to be taken seriously. A Miers defeat, if it could be made to happen, would deal a serious blow to the Bush presidency. Conservatives need to think hard about that.

But Bush defenders like Hewitt need to consider this: A Miers win would also deal serious blows - to the Republican party, to the conservative movement, and, yes, to the Bush presidency.

He ultimately concludes: "It would be best if this nomination were quietly and decently withdrawn. If not, it should be resisted."

Surfing around the web, it is awfully hard to find anyone apart from an Administration mouthpiece who has anything good to say about Miers. In today's NYT, John Tierney and Maureen Dowd both agree that the nomination is a mistake. Indeed, Tierny, the conservative, is actually more contemptuos than Dowd, which is always a hard thing to be. He opens his column, which is entitled "Justice Miers? Get Real" with the following:

The contrarian in me has been trying to find a reason to defend Harriet Miers against her critics, but it's too much of a stretch. We need a new nominee.

Dowd finds herself in the unusual position of agreeing that "[t]he right is right about Ms. Miers's insufficiency to join the Brethren." But her native vindictiveness leads her to half hope Miers gets confirmed anyway:

Even if [Miers] was going to be a loyal conservative jurist before, why should she be now, after all the loathsome things [the Right has] said?

The old maxim goes that a neoconservative is a liberal who got mugged by reality. But if you're a conservative mugged by conservatives, neo and paleo, it may have the opposite effect and turn you into ... David Souter!!!!

Given what's going on here, I find it hard to see how Miers can make it.

But what actually caught my attention in David Frum's piece was this statistic:

The president is down to 37% approval - but he still holds 80% of conservatives.

Doesn't that mean that "conservatives" make up only 29.6% of the electorate? That is a pretty slim base on which to build a dynasty.

The 2006 elections are going to be interesting.