Editorial: Score one for right wing

Friday, Oct. 28, 2005 | 7:42 a.m.

We will never know the kind of Supreme Court justice that Harriet Miers might have been -- the Republican Party's right wing took care of that. On Thursday President Bush, bowing to religious and social conservatives who had bitterly opposed Miers' selection, said he accepted Miers' request to withdraw her nomination.

It wasn't as if this move came out of thin air. Indeed, some conservatives within the past week had suggested that an impasse between the White House and the Senate over releasing internal documents Miers had authored as legal counsel to the president created just the kind of face-saving move -- withdrawing her nomination -- that they believed could let Bush escape this controversy.

Some conservative commentators opposed Miers' nomination because they didn't believe she had the intellectual firepower necessary for the Supreme Court. But Miers didn't withdraw because a handful of conservative columnists didn't believe she was up to the challenge of being a member of the nation's highest court.

No, the real reason her nomination was sunk is that religious and social conservatives wanted a sure vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that upheld a woman's right to choose on abortion. Because there was some uncertainty as to how Miers might rule, religious conservatives fervently worked against her nomination.

Getting rid of the Miers' nomination was a blatant attempt to stop any hemorrhaging among the president's political base. Bush's standing in the polls has taken a bruising over the past several months, as a growing number of Americans have questioned his leadership on a number of issues.

Miers' withdrawal will help him with his base -- as long as his next nominee has a clear record of opposition to abortion -- but Thursday's decision likely will erode his standing among moderates, many of whom voted for him in 2004. Caving in to social conservatives isn't a sign of leadership -- it's a sign of weakness.

We were looking forward to the confirmation hearings to get a better sense of Miers' judicial philosophy, but senators -- and the American people -- will be denied that opportunity because Bush capitulated to bullying by religious conservatives.

If the president wanted to do the right thing -- and along the way help improve his standing with the vast majority of the American public -- he would nominate someone in the mold of retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a jurist in the mainstream of American legal philosophy. But we don't hold out much hope for that happening -- not after seeing how Miers got dumped.