That’s the title of my new Confirmation Tales post (audio version included), which addresses the widely overlooked, but highly consequential, matter of Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid’s strategic failure on the Harriet Miers nomination. From my conclusion:
When Miers withdrew her nomination, Reid railed that the “radical right wing of the Republican Party drove this woman’s nomination right out of town.” But it was Reid’s own failure to lead his fellow Democrats to foster the appearance that Miers would be confirmed that helped bring an early end to the nomination.
His tendentious rhetoric aside, Reid was correct that the collapse of the Miers nomination was a momentous victory for political conservatives and for the conservative legal movement. George Bush learned that he couldn’t take for granted that conservatives would fall in line and support whomever he nominated to the Supreme Court. Instead, he had to nominate someone who would earn the support of conservatives.
An important shift in power had occurred. That shift would manifest itself in the substitute nomination of Samuel Alito that Bush would make a few days later. It would also play out in Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency in 2016 and in his three successful Supreme Court nominations.
Please sign up for Confirmation Tales. (My planned post for next week is, I think you will find, a real doozy.)