An Embattled and Weakened Bush Goes Nuclear

One of the things that shouldn't be lost is that, in addition to being an obvious stratospheric launch in order to deflect attention from the indictment of one of Bush and Cheney's most very senior advisors, this nomination is an assault on mainstream Republicans.

Already, NPR has reported multiple anonymous Republican senators who are very unhappy with the nomination. Considering Bush's already weakened position -- and after the Meirs nomination, there are a growing number of moderate Republicans that deeply question his judgement -- I fully expect to see Republican defectors.

Just like in the Miers nomination, Democrats are largely bystanders here. Unlike Miers and Roberts, there's no way we're going to vote for Alito. Not a prayer. So the heavy lifting now falls on so-called "moderate" Republicans who are looking at Bush's track record, looking at the incomprehensible political violence of this nomination, looking at the Republican's rapidly eroding 2006 prospects, and who need to come to some decision on whether or not they're going to hitch their wagon to Bush's increasingly skeletal horse.

This could be a night of long knives against the moderate and old-school-members of the Republican Party. Or they could decide to put on the uniform, and for once and for all march with the new theocrats. A very, very dangerous situation for them, for us, and for America.

Obviously, the Gang of Fourteen agreement to keep the Senate from changing its own rules to force a nominee through has been completely wiped of the planet by this one. Pretty much everyone not itching for a fight -- and by definition, both the Republican and Democratic members of the Gang of Fourteen were among those most desiring comity in nominations -- can agree that Alito does not meet the standard of someone to be covered. It's not even that Alito wants to move back to a previous period of American history -- there doesn't seem any period of American history backwards and punitive enough for him.

Alito is, put an imprecise word on it, nuts. Against women, against civil rights, against everyday people -- everybody. So far out of the mainstream that you can't even see him from there. Bush is electing to replace Sandra Day O'Connor's seat with someone for whom womens' rights began and ended with the Nineteenth Amendment. And we might even want to ask him to clarify his views on that.

They're shoving him up to pay his respects to Rosa Parks today -- someone who fought against the very laws that Alito himself continues to attempt to defend, in whatever drips and trickles he can manage in the cases that come his way.

Bush continues to cement his position as the worst president in modern history. Completely unable to govern, he merely campaigns, weaving from one issue to the next in a desperate attempt to deflect attention from the criminality -- from Enron to Libby -- of his closest supporters, and the ongoing fiascos of his economic and foreign policy adventures.