Bush regretting Meiers nomination

Count F.O.G. (Friend of George) Charles Krauthammer among the defectors over the nomination of Harriet Meiers. Check some of these snippets:

...But nominating a constitutional tabula rasa to sit on what is America's constitutional court is an exercise of regal authority with the arbitrariness of a king giving his favorite general a particularly plush dukedom...

...It is particularly dismaying that this act should have been perpetrated by the conservative party. For half a century, liberals have corrupted the courts by turning them into an instrument of radical social change on questions -- school prayer, abortion, busing, the death penalty -- that properly belong to the elected branches of government. Conservatives have opposed this arrogation of the legislative role and called for restoration of the purely interpretive role of the court. To nominate someone whose adult life reveals no record of even participation in debates about constitutional interpretation is an insult to the institution and to that vision of the institution. There are 1,084,504 lawyers in the United States. What distinguishes Harriet Miers from any of them, other than her connection with the president? To have selected her, when conservative jurisprudence has J. Harvie Wilkinson, Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell and at least a dozen others on a bench deeper than that of the New York Yankees, is scandalous...

...By choosing a nominee suggested by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and well known only to himself, the president has ducked a fight on the most important domestic question dividing liberals from conservatives: the principles by which one should read and interpret the Constitution. For a presidency marked by a courageous willingness to think and do big things, this nomination is a sorry retreat into smallness...

That Bush now finds himself befriended by Harry Reid and attacked by William Kristol, Bill Bennett, Charles Krauthammer and others should suggest a few realities:

1. Bush is politically weak. Very weak.

2. His Administration did very little to vet this candidate among conservatives.

3. Gave his opponents greater say in his selection than his supporters.

4. Has short-changed the American public.

5. Has committed the same sort of mistake his father made on taxes.

6. May very well have committed this nation to a very lethargic three years of lame-duckness.

7. Sold out movement conservatives who voted for him largely because of the opportunity to name 2-3 justices.

8. Has convinced me that my vote for John Forbes Kerry was the right one.

George W. Bush can no longer be viewed as bumbling simpleton occupuying the Oval Office. He has to be viewed as dangerous. He's dangerous to himself, his advisors, his party, his nation and the world. His inability to make even the most fundamental political calculations, much less determine a strategy for prisoner interrogation, the war in Iraq, the War on Terror, America's role in the world and a workable Social Security reform demonstrates this. I regret most any support I ever gave this guy. He's blown every opportunity and failed nearly every test.