Miers's nomination is the right's excuse to divorce Bush?

[Nimrod2005]

CONSERVATIVES ARE MAD ABOUT IRAQ, NOT MIERS.

Proxy Fight
by Franklin Foer

Post date 10.20.05 | Issue date 10.31.05

If Harriet Miers didn't exist, conservatives would need to invent her. Five years into the Bush administration, they are stuck with an uncomfortable fact: They have fervently supported a president who has not only failed to deliver many lasting victories to their movement, but who has also saddled the reputation of the American right with what will (in all likelihood) be regarded as a losing war.

Snip

That's not to say that they don't have sound reasons for howling about President Bush's lackey-cum-nominee. The selection of a bona fide movement devotee--with time served in the anti-leftist Federalist Society, as opposed to the cursed American Bar Association--would have certainly won applause from current kvetchers like National Review and Senator Sam Brownback. But conservatives have responded to Miers with fury--indeed, many have been subconsciously hoping for such a provocation--because they need a pretext to begin divorce proceedings against Bush and, more important, his war.

Snip

That the Miers controversy would become a proxy for the war isn't surprising. During the last five years, the war on terrorism has achieved a significance that comes close to anti-communism's centrality to cold war conservatism. It has provided the ballast for the right's coalition--the common belief uniting such disparate cohorts as budget hawks, religious conservatives, and foreign policy nationalists. In a way, the war provides the subtext for every political debate these days.

This coming debate over the war will have far greater significance for the future of conservatism than the Miers nomination. After Iraq, what will hold the conservative coalition together? Will the coming moment provide an opening for a resurgence of isolationism or a far less strident brand of realism? Miers could prove to be the little lady who starts the big war.

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=kq7ynPwuqpoXhb5Azm%2Begy%3D%3D

[smoogatz]

1. More like the last straw.

Bush ran center-left, but governed (if you can call it that) as a neo-con radical, mainly interested in lining the pockets of his billionaire cronies. No old-line, country-club Republican wants to be associated with that. They've been cringing since day one--they're just such cowards they were afraid to speak up while Bush was still powerful enough to punish them.

[kentuck]

2. A "read my lips" moment ?

could be...