So Harriet Miers is out. When is the last time a nominee was shot down not because of some personal scandal or even for being "too radical," but simply for not pleasing the forces in one's own party? I'm not a Supreme Court historian, so I don't know.

Much has been talked about with Miers, so I don't feel the need to waste our time on rehashing what has been said elsewhere. It's apparent, to me, that Miers was a poor pick. Easy to say now, of course, but any time a nominee has to step aside before it even begins due to objections within your stable, it's pretty tough to put forth face-saving spin. I was never particularly excited about Miers and as the opposition to the nomination mounted, I found myself agreeing with it. At the same time, though, while I found Miers uninspiring and a poor pick, she was nowhere near worthy of the multitude of attacks heaped on her.

It's all quite astonishing, really, until you consider that it was never really about Miers at all.

It has not been a particularly easy time to be a Republican. One by one, many of us have looked back at the Administration that we are defending and realizing that only are we finding ourselves defending the indefensible, we're defending much of what we're here to attack. And yet we find ourselves in the position articulated so well by Rob Booth:

Nancy Pelosi et al criticizing the GOP for abandoning their ideals is kind of like David Lee Roth criticizing The Police for abandoning their New Wave roots. He might be right, and it is sad that Synchronicity isn't as good as Outlandos D'Amour, but are you saying that if I buy the new David Lee Roth album it's going to sound like Regatta de Blanc?

Of course not. Give the Democrats the House, Senate, and Presidency, we'll be living in a European-style socialist state faster than you can say anarcho-tyranny.

So, if the goal here is to win the debating contest, then ok, you win. I'm disappointed in the Republican leadership. Glad to see that's fun for you all, that really endears me to your cause.

If the goal is to disalign limited government types from the GOP, they're doing a good enough job by themselves. Thanks for playing though.

And critiquing party that you've come to merely find less unfavorable than the other party, you're put in a bind also well-articulated by Mr. Booth:

One of the many things that tires me about politics is this: In any endeavor I undertake, I look back at it afterwards and think about ways that it could have been better. That's the military training coming through, we always conducted "after action reviews" where we were free to critique our performance and the performance of others. Done right, this is an excellent tool.

Unfortunately, in politics, this technique is impossible to implement. Because some people are interested in assigning blame, for political purposes, people try to avoid taking responsibility, for political purposes.

This leaves people like me, with one foot in politics and one foot in the real world of people who do things for a living, in a difficult position. I can critique the Administration's response and aid those who would use that honest critique for a dishonest political advantage.

I can't be the only Republican feeling this crunch. I'm pretty confident that I'm not. The usual suspects have been chest-beating purity grunts for a couple years now. But a lot of us have sat back and looked at the alternatives and punched the ticket for the administration by either defending it or ceasing fire. This includes a number of the people that were the loudest during this nomination process.

I'm not sure exactly what it was about Harriet Miers that made it the straw on the camel's back, but I think that's what it was. Even with Miers withdrawn, the underlying causes of the fissure remain. Intellectual and philosophy-oriented conservatives have been taking all kinds of social heat for defending an administration largely seen as anti-intellectual. And it was this particular poke-in-the-eye that they had no particular interest in defending because there was the perception that it came at their expense. In the same way that the Katrina response made it harder to defend the administration more broadly in Iraq, the Miers pick made it harder than it already was to defend the notion that this Administration even has a philosophical underpinning. That's important because without it, some of the sacrifices made that are 180-degrees from where conservatives would like them to be (spending, most centrally) becomes impossible to defend. It even becomes impossible to accomodate. It's one thing to run up deficits to 'choke' the federal government or to spend more our way so that we don't spend it theirs, but without the philosophical underpinning, all you're really doing is negotiating the terms of your surrender.

For a party that's been in almost complete and uninterrupted power for five years now (except the courts, another reason why this straw was heavier than it originally looked), it's enough to blow one's mind. And that's what happened. A lot of otherwise thoughtful and conscientious conservatives simply blew their minds. People can try to paint David Frum as an opportunist all they want, but he's done his career no favors this past week and I honestly believe that wasn't the point. The point was catharsis, which makes for crappy career moves and even crappier politics.