Rebel Alliance: Can You Hear Me Now?

Peter Baker writes about conservative opposition to Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers in The Conservative Machine's Unexpected Turn on A17. One thing I wondered about when I posted on the Concerned Women of America's refusal to back Miers was how big an organization CWA is these days; Baker says it has 500,000 members. And something tells me all those people aren't in the evil BosWash Axis of Elitism.

Baker's story focuses on weak, unenthusiastic support for Miers from the right--outfits that are spending less time and money on supporting this nominee, or none at all.  But the really interesting action is outright opposition, mentioned only briefly in the last graf. For details on that story, you have to read Alexander Bolton in The Hill:

David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who helped coin the phrase “axis of evil,” is coordinating the anti-Miers fundraising effort.

The first phase of the campaign is estimated to cost between $50,000 and $100,000. Frum declined to comment on how or when the money might be spent, whether on newspaper, radio or Internet advertisements.

He said underwriters had expressed an interest in putting up the money and he had planned to go back to them when he and other strategists decided the best way to spend it.

He is teaming up with other conservatives behind the scenes to generate opposition to Miers’s nomination, which his former colleagues at the White House are straining to sell to the conservative base.

Here's to hoping Frum's position at the American Enterprise Institute is secure.

Back in the Department of Withholding Support, yesterday the American Conservative Union came out with this:

What is most troubling about this whole affair, however, is the way the administration has gone about trying to demonize conservatives who have raised questions about Ms. Miers. It began from day one to attack personally the motives, loyalty and judgment of anyone who questioned the wisdom of the nomination. Since then, the ad hominem attacks on Miers’s conservative critics have been unconscionably heavy-handed and will haunt the president regardless of how the nomination fight turns out.

Most conservatives have stood with Bush from the beginning. Those of us who know him like him. We’ve swallowed policies we might otherwise have objected to because we’ve believed that he and those around him are themselves conservatives trying to do the right thing against sometimes terrible odds. We’ve been there for him because we’ve considered ourselves part of his team.

No more.

From now on, this administration will find it difficult to muster support on the right without explaining why it should be forthcoming. The days of the blank check have ended because no thinking conservative really wants to be part of a team that requires marching in lock step without question or thought, even if it is headed by the president of the United States.

Hey. Even BosWash Axes of Elitism have feelings, you know?

X-wing image from Star Wars.com