We are now witnessing, in activist Ed Morrissey's words, "a conservative civil war" over the Miers nomination, with many leaders on the right declaring that they no longer can take President Bush at his word. They're demanding that Miers answer the kinds of questions that they considered out of bounds just a few weeks ago. They're even circulating these questions among themselves.
They want to know (among other things) whether Miers, as an evangelical Christian, had moral qualms about running the Texas Lottery Commission. They want to know why she sympathized with people with AIDS while serving on the Dallas City Council. They want to know why she helped create a lecture series that brought famous liberal feminists to Southern Methodist University in 1998.
Jan LaRue, chief counsel at Concerned Women for America, a conservative grassroots group, said yesterday: "My goodness, we keep being told to just believe the President. I was on a conference call - everybody was - with [GOP national chairman] Ken Mehlman, and the whole message was 'Trust us, trust us, trust us.' But we've never had to just rely on trust before. There was always credible information to look at before. But, with this nominee, I can't determine what she really believes in, and I can't find anything in her record even remotely related to constitutional law."
Hence, the conservatives' desire to probe Miers' background for any signs of ideological purity, in the hope of determining whether she is truly committed to moving the high court rightward - even if it appears that their questions are just as intrusive as the Democratic questions they have typically denounced. Just weeks ago, for instance, there was an uproar among conservatives when liberal activists raised questions about nominee John Roberts' ties to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.
Of course nothing will stop them from changing their view of what's appropriate once the next nominee comes up.