perfidy

Here's yet another view of the Miers nomination, from John Fund of the Opinion Journal. At first Fund was fairly positive about the Miers, but after talking to some people who knew her, he is less sanguine about the likelihood that she will be the staunch conservative that Bush and other Miers boosters claim she is.

The key point that Fund makes is that there are disturbing (for conservatives) parallels between Miers and O'Connor:

What is clear is that her association with George W. Bush has affected her worldview.

David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, who describes Ms. Miers's role in the White House as largely that of a "bureaucrat who couldn't see the forest for the trees," nonetheless believes that Team Bush is right--but only for a while. He believes she will be remain a conservative justice at least until Mr. Bush leaves office in early 2009. "But then the Bushies will have gone home, and she will develop new friends, and then the inevitable tug to the left may prove irresistible."

A friend of both Mr. Bush and Ms. Miers disagrees. He notes that for eight years Justice O'Connor remained largely true to Ronald Reagan's judicial views, even though she had no personal ties to him. "I think Harriet has morphed her views into those of the president," he told me. "I think she will be pretty much the same justice she starts out being for 10 or 15 years. And she is now 60."

Indeed, in many ways, Ms. Miers resembles the early Sandra Day O'Connor, another elected official who backed some liberal positions during her time in the Arizona Legislature. As Justice O'Connor began drifting to the center she became the crucial swing vote on a host of cases. Legal scholars began referring to the "O'Connor Court." Now, with Ms. Miers slated to take the O'Connor seat it may become the "Miers Court."

"This is the most closely divided court in history," says Jay Sekulow , a conservative legal activist who backs Ms. Miers. "Everybody knows what is at stake here." With such high stakes, it should disappoint everyone that the Senate will now have to debate the confirmation of a nominee who, when it comes to Constitutional law, resembles a secret agent more than a scholar.

Despite the at times intense grumbling from the right, I don't think that Miers will be yanked. President Bush is renowned and reviled for his stubborness and loyalty. These factors will not predispose him to pulling support unless research reveals some hidden, fatal flaw in Miers. Short of some evil-doing in her past, she will go before the Senate. And Senate Republicans are unlikely in the extreme to vote against her.