Hugh Hewitt is no hack. Read his last post and you’ll know.

One of the things that makes Hugh’s post so great is that he drops the

elitism bit. The whole hack/elitism thing is silly, wrong, and

counterproductive. I hope it’s over. And Hugh’s right to be ticked

at the tendency to read Miers supporters out of the conservative

movement, the Republican coalition, or whatever you want to call it.

Thank goodness we’ve got Hugh on our side­and he is on our side,

despite all the differences on Miers.

As for the issue I’ve focused on, I don’t claim certainty on

Miers and Bollinger. But I do see more than sufficient reason to

oppose, and oppose strongly. It isn’t just her support for the Bar

Association quotas. In fact, it isn’t even mostly that. Her

“passionate” support for those quotas just confirms what her support

for the feminist lecture series, her reported White House role in the

Michigan case, and her Texas political career (achieved through an

alliance with feminists) suggests. Miers believes in affirmative

action. Am I absolutely certain that she will be another O’Connor or

worse on that issue? No. Am I certain that the signs are about as

bad as they can get without a signed declaration of how she’ll vote. Unfortunately, yes.

But Hugh is correct to point to the congressional elections as

the key to all this. From the start I’ve argued that the political

dangers of the nuclear option, and the Republican senate’s own desire

to avoid a politically dangerous fight, are behind the Miers

nomination. John Fund confirms this in his latest column, where he

notes that several possible conservative appointments were nixed by

Republican senators. Hugh acknowledges that the politics of rejecting

the nomination could cut either way, yet he seems fairly certain that

rejection of Miers will be far more politically harmful than confirmation.

I’m not convinced of that. Was Richard Nixon really

critically weakened, as Hugh says, by Senate rejection of Haynesworth

and Carswell? That’s not my recollection. Certainly it didn’t

prevent a Nixon landslide in 1972. I think a strong conservative

nomination in place of Miers would reunite the coalition. I’m not

sure we can successfully pull off the nuclear option. And that might

endanger some moderate Republicans, and thus the Republican majority

itself. But even a failed attempt to put through a great conservative

would likely fire up Republican voters as much­or more­than a victory.

Hugh’s argument is powerful, no doubt about it. But in the

end, I think it suffers from the same problem as the Miers nomination

itself. It’s too clever. Yes, people are strategic, to an extent.

That’s why conservatives swallowed their disappointments for years.

They knew the strategy was to get a good conservative on the court.

But people cannot be entirely tactical. In the end, the real populist

argument is that you’ve got to give people something that moves

them­something that hits them at their core. Asking folks to get on

board because it’s too late and messy to do otherwise isn’t going to

get the political results Hugh wants, even if Miers is confirmed. The

disappointment is too palpable for that. Anyway, we’re having a

worthy debate. I’m glad Hugh’s in it­ and very much on our side.