Conventional wisdom still has it that Miers is a shoo-in for confirmation. I'm not so sure.
Now it's not just the extreme right that is being critical, but people like
George Will.
Under the rubric of ``diversity'' -- nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually disreputable impulses -- the president announced, surely without fathoming the implications, his belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation. Identity politics holds that one's essential attributes are genetic, biological, ethnic or chromosomal -- that one's nature and understanding are decisively shaped by race, ethnicity or gender. Categorical representation holds that the interests of a group can only be understood, empathized with and represented by a member of that group.
The crowning absurdity of the president's wallowing in such nonsense is the obvious assumption that the Supreme Court is, like a legislature, an institution of representation. This from a president who, introducing Miers, deplored judges who ``legislate from the bench.''
Bush may have hoped to avoid a fight with the left, but he may be getting a fight anyway. And while he can laugh off the Angry Left, which would never support him no matter what he did, his own party is a force he'd be a fool to misunderestimate.
