It’s a dreary Monday — a perfect time in the blogosphere to pick up where last week’s debate left off and further dissect the GOP divide brought on by Harriet Miers’ nomination to the Supreme Court.
The ‘sphere is relatively absent of invective aimed at the media early today — and that’s a novelty right there. More bloggers seem preoccupied with pouncing on the Republicans while they’re down — aided by the media’s coverage of Republicans wrestling with each other while they are down.
The Miers-driven rift in the Republican Party dominated discussion on the Sunday talk shows, while prominent articles examining the GOP’s plight from the Washington Times and the Washington Post are keeping the focus squarely in place today. “In domestic political news, the hits just keep on coming for the GOP,” writes NDN Blog. “The Post has a front page story on potential Republican candidates’ mounting reluctance to pursue election in 2006. On the plus side, nobody was indicted over the weekend.”
“There’s little sign that many conservatives’ ire and profound disappointment over President George Bush’s nomination of his lawyer Harriet Miers is subsiding,” writes The Moderate Voice. “From all indications, even many conservatives supporting Bush’s choice are holding their noses while doing so.” The Heretik piles on, describing the current political context thusly: “[T]he Republican party, the epitome of a disciplined party after surviving the bitter divisions of the early to mid-60s to finally become the party stamped with Ronald Reagan’s conservative values, is now creaking with strains amid not-so-subtle hints of future political retribution.”
Simianbrain wonders if the Washington Post jumped the gun with its projection of a broad decline in the GOP’s congressional prospects: “It’s impossible to know whether stories like these are hype or really speak to substantial difficulties next year, but just having that narrative out there (‘GOP struggling’) gives momentum to Democrats.” Brandon Jaynes, under the sardonic headline, “The Sky is Falling!” writes, “The bottom line: Republicans are shaking, no, quaking, at the prospect of running against the Democrat war machine in ’06.” Noting that “[t]he media are doing their part in reporting it, too,” he concludes: “I guess we should expect a lot more of these to prepare our mindset for defeat (no sense in going out and voting, fellow Republicans).”
Speaking of mindsets, Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters in a Post op-ed yesterday explored the storm the Miers pick has unleashed on the right: “Well, he’s finally done it. By nominating White House lawyer Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, George Bush has managed to accomplish what Al Gore, John Kerry, Tom Daschle and any number of Democratic heavyweights have been unable to do: He has cracked the Republican monolith. Split his own party activists. And how.”
That split, Captain Ed wrote, breaks down three ways: “The Loyalist Army,” “The Rebel Alliance,” and “The Trench-Dwelling Dogfaces.”
Given the conflict-based nature of the blogosphere, we expected the piece to unleash a subsequent storm, led by activists trying to rally the troops. Instead, the conservative blogosphere seems to have accepted Captain Ed’s grim prognosis. Says CDR Salamander, lining up as a new variant of Trench-Dwelling Dogface (“Scurvy Mouthed Sailor”), “It is difficult, though, to just sit at anchor watching the once loyal regiments ashore line up against each their countrymen.”
But bloggers being bloggers, someone is angry somewhere. Cue Powerpundit: “[I]t helps none — at all — for Ed Gillespie to be running around accusing many of those discontented of sexism and elitism. The White House ought to drop that tactic real quick. I know Mr. Rove is a bit distracted as of late, but that’s no excuse for the stupidity of that move.”
And Morrissey’s piece has prompted an extensive debate at RedState. In a long screed, The Strata-Sphere explains how he was barred from the site for testing the mettle of “Key folks at Redstate [who] have been pushing for a civil war in the Republican Party, and the broader conservative movement, over the Miers nomination. … I was banned because I called the anti-Miers crowd ‘extremists’ and ‘fanatics’. Compared to the innuendo thrown at Miers, this is not very tough rhetoric.”
The Strata-Sphere’s lingering last words? Bring on the fight! “So the arrogance of the anti-Miers crowd has drawn me to only one conclusion: they seriously want to have this internal war,” he writes. “So be it. I would very much prefer not to.”
You can almost hear RedState’s California Yankee sighing while discussing the ever-widening split: “We should have seen this coming. By blogosphere standards, the signs were evident long ago.”
–Edward B. Colby
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.