Taranto today discusses reaction to the justification from the White House for Harriet Miers’s nomination, “that she is an evangelical Christian.” I can?t help thinking that perhaps Pres. Bush is intentionally sabotaging the Miers nomination by blatantly admitting that justification. I think it would be reasonable for the White House to expect that such a justification would cause outrage from the left. That way, despite conservative opposition to the nomination, leftists would be seen opposing Miers because of her Christianity. The idea would be to resolidify the evangelical base for Bush.
Obviously this is speculative, and the main flaw is that it assumes Bush would essentially give himself a black eye, too. It sounds feasible to me only if Bush already thinks he has given himself a black eye over this nomination, in which case he would want to deflect the blame as much as possible and remove the albatross.
