Go Left, Mr. President
Writing in The New Yorker before the Alito nomination, David Remnick described how President Bush's betrayal of conservative principles had cost him support on the right:
Many of his newly emboldened critics are leading members of the true-believing conservative wing of the Republican Party, ideological radicals who saw Harriet Miers as the most underqualified crony to be nominated since the Truman Administration and could not bring themselves to believe the Administration's winks and nods hinting that she was ideologically—and theologically—One of Us. With the Miers nomination, a moment had arrived in which ideological devotion trumped partisan loyalty…Over the years, the purists could absorb some of Bush's departures from the conservative creed—the Medicare prescription-drug legislation, a campaign-finance bill—but they could not countenance a failure to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, a "swing vote" on the Court, with a jurist in the mold of Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas.
The solution to the anger on the right? According to Remnick, Bush should move further to the left.
