Bush’s nomination of Miers—another last straw for conservatives?

Last week David Frum wrote: “All this year, the president has been testing the limits of his support. Well we are at the limit now, and anything less than a superb choice for the O’Connor vacancy will overstep it.” Well, President Bush has now done exactly Frum warned would mean the end of conservative support for him—he has appointed White House counsel and Bush crony Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Frum has a blistering column about it today at NRO which is well worth reading. I’ve never seen him as indignant as he is here; in fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen him indignant, period. However, in the end, exactly as I predicted last week, Frum falls short of his threat to withdraw his support from Bush. He writes:

The Court will be this president’s great lasting conservative domestic legacy. He has chosen to put that legacy at risk by using what may well be his last Supreme Court choice to reward a loyal counselor. But this president, any president, has larger loyalties.

And those to whom he owed those loyalties have reason today to be disappointed and alarmed.

That’s it? Disappointed and alarmed? But disappointment and alarm are already old stories when it comes to conservatives’ feelings about this president. They keep getting disappointed and alarmed, but, no matter how far he goes in betraying them and violating conservative principle, and even sticking his betrayals and violations in their faces, they go on supporting him.

What satisfactions all this must bring for the conservative-hating Bush clan. During the 1988 primaries, conservative columnist George Will derided George Bush the elder as a lapdog. We can understand Bush the younger’s presidency as an organized campaign of revenge on conservatives for that remark: George W. has successfully turned the conservatives into his lapdogs.

Now over at Lucianne.com, some L-dotters are indeed saying that this means the end of their support for Bush, but, of course, they are the rank and file of the conservative movement, not the leaders and spokesmen. Furthermore, in my partial reading of the Lucianne thread, the majority of the L-dotters are still backing Bush to the hilt. As one of them says, “I trust Bush, and I trust God.” Talk about lapdogs!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 03, 2005 12:18 PM | Send