Thoughts on the Miers fiasco

She threw in the towel (or was told too). I see the reasons that Bush nominated her and I think he had good reasons to do so. But this nomination was in serious jeopardy for a lot of reasons, and the President I think realized there had to be unity on the right in order to get a confirmation. I think he was trying to avoid the nasty fight with the left, and forgot about his base. Many, many voters chose Bush the last two elections precisely because they wanted a new direction for the Supreme Court. That the nominee would be a constructionist was a given, and pro-lifers hoped that a new balance in the Court may finally rid us of the national disgrace of abortion on demand. When Miers was nominated, many were fearful of another "Souter", a republican appointee without a long paper trail that morphs into a liberal. I understand the fear and wish for a more known quantity like Luttig or Brown, but I thought they should have given the President the benefit of the doubt. No matter now, Miers was smart enough to see the writing on the wall and gave her President a way out of this mess.
So now what? The big, knock-down, drag-em-out brawl is coming now, for sure. Bush must appoint a big-name conservative jurist, and the Democrats WILL PLAY ROUGH. They understand as well as we the stakes involved. There WILL end up being a fillibuster and the Republicans WILL be forced to use the "nuclear" option to break it. And it may take a long time and Bush may have to send up more than one such candidate. I hope Justice O'Conner lives long enough to retire.
Lord help us if Stevens retires or dies.
By the way, there are some mainstream media types figuring out all this blog stuff. Funny they didn't memtion Big Daddy's Digest. I guess I need a few more thousand hits a day.