BORROWING OCCAM'S RAZOR:

The Miers political plot thickens, with twists (James Klurfeld, October 7, 2005, Newsday)

The leaders of the conservative movement fear that Bush, who has sunk in the polls, has blinked at the crucial moment, the one they have waited 40 years to achieve. Bush doesn't believe he blinked at all. He winked - as in, c'mon folks, I'm putting one over on the liberals. Trust me.

And that's where the double-double cross comes in. Democrats fear that Miers is exactly what Bush intimates she is: a born-again evangelical and a cause conservative who will work to overturn Roe v. Wade. And the liberals fear that some of the bellyaching from the right is just a ploy to trick them into supporting Miers, or at least not vehemently opposing her. If the conservatives are howling, can she be that bad? In their hearts, a lot of Democrats fear she is. Bush's prediction that she will never change her stripes should be chilling to them. It suggests she is exactly what Justice John G. Roberts said he was not: an ideologue.

And then there's the triple-double cross. This is where some Democrats argue that the best thing that could happen to the party would be for Bush to have his way and for the court to actually overturn Roe v. Wade. The argument here is that nothing has so energized the right-wing evangelical movement as the court decision that legalized abortion. Overturning it - which, according to polls, about two-thirds of voters would oppose - will energize the moderate-left in the same manner the right was energized by legalizing it. And besides, even some liberal jurists admit the Roe decision was wrongly decided. Most states will then legalize abortion. Also, some Democrats argue, with the greater availability of the morning-after contraceptive pill, there will be less reason for the procedure.

In Washington there is even a twist to the triple-double. It is that Republicans, as opposed to conservatives, don't really want to overturn Roe. They want the issue.

It's always safest to just choose the simplest explantions: George Bush picked her because of her faith and neocons and libertarians oppose her for the same reason.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 7, 2005 11:28 PM