Harriet Miers just threw in the towel on her Supreme Court nomination. I honestly didn’t think this was going to happen, but the fact that so many political pundits said that she would made me wonder. I knew Bush wouldn’t knock her out–that would be stupid. But the idea that Miers would gracefully bow out for the sake of saving Bush some skin did sound possible, and in fact, it happened.

So what now? First of all, I’m wondering if this too, will hurt Bush, at least initially. It can’t look good when somebody Bush nominates “breaks under the pressure”. I do think that it will help in the long run, because W will now inevitably nominate somebody that the conservatives really want. So, Bush will get some base support back and hopefully he will get back on track in the White House.

One of the cool things about this is the fact that if/when Bush nominates a (qualified) hardcore conservative originalist, the Dems are finally gonna make a big fuss and hopefully a real, honest debate will be had on the role of the judicial branch of our government. I think this is important because the are so many people out there who have no idea what the Supreme Court is supposed to do. Even our politicians are confused by the idea that the SCOTUS doesn’t make law, but that it simply is supposed to rule on whether the constitution supports the laws that are trying to be passed. I could go on with this, but the main point is that we are finally going to be able to get into the arena of ideas on this because both political parties are going to fight hard on the next nominee.