Miers Is OUT! Was this her call or was it Rove's?

File this under the category of "HOLY CRAP".

Harriet Meirs, the Bush Imperium lawyer and apparent in-house cheerleader of Bush Junior, has withdrawn her nomination to the US Supreme Court.

This news is surprising, partly because the Imperium was hell-bent on getting their favorite crony into the highest court, and also partly because in all likelihood, the US Senate was going to roll over and confirm her anyway.

This is something that I already pointed towards in recent columns. Sure both liberal and conservative groups bashed Miers. Sure she was a crony! Sure she seemed to have less judicial experience than the judges in all of the fictional crime drama shows combined. Sure she was more mysterious than amateur night at the Impromptu Ad-Lib Theatre. It didn't matter! The Senate was still going to roll and vote to confirm her, kicking and screaming if possible. Once the process got into gear, the GOP was going to confirm her.

She was being given every opportunity to come off as credible. She blew the take-home exam and was given a "do-over". She was being GIVEN the questions she would have been asked in the confirmation hearings IN ADVANCE! These are not things given to a nominee that was going to be left for dead.

That's why the conservatives are busy doing a post-mortem on her withdrawal. "Oh, she would have been a GREAT Supreme Court justice! She would have been the PERFECT nominee! She would have done such a GREAT job!" Yeah, right. You know, she could have been the Torquamada of the high court... or she could have been another David Souter, it really doesn't matter at this point. The conservatives couldn't trust the Bush Imperium enough to simply rely on the president's good word.

So the real speculation is... did SHE decide to pull herself out of the game on her own?

There IS a chance that she simply didn't "feel the love" from the Republicans. She was going out there to Capitol Hill day in and day out visiting Senators, and she wasn't getting the glowing praises that she was expecting. She was getting praises from the Imperium ass-kissers, but that's pretty much it. Maybe she realized that she wasn't going to get any kind of respect if she got the job.

Or MAYBE she was FORCED to bow out by Darth Rove and Scooter Libby? Not as a diversion, mind you, but simply to cut their losses. The Imperium is going from being compared to Emperor Nero to being compared to Emperor Claudius. (And that's really not a compliment.) Indictments are in the works. The FEMA ineptitude is still going strong. The spin has spun out over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, folks. Something's got to go.

Well either way, I'm getting a little annoyed by the libs who are saying that now that Miers is out, the next nominee will be even worse. That's a pretty damned fatalistic approach to this situation. Miers was a wild card crony nominee packaged as being a diehard evangelical bible-thumper. I'd say it's a little hard to find someone "worse" than that. The only reason why she was opposed by the conservatives was that she was TOO much of a wild card.

Also, you libs shouldn't be praising Senate MINORITY Leader Harry Reid for his "brilliant political tactics" over this situation. (Are you listening, Randi Rhodes?) Reid did NOTHING. Just like he did NOTHING to stand in the way of the confirmation process of John Roberts. This was all the doing of conservatives, neo-conservatives, and the Religious Wrong. They didn't trust the Imperium enough to allow this nomination to go through unscathed. If they stood behind the White House and put faith in Bush Junior's decision, the confirmation process of Harriet Meirs would have been a cakewalk, and Reid would have been gutted by his liberal "friends" for doing the same thing... NOTHING.

The liberals were LUCKY on this one.