Will the GOP have another Harriet Miers moment? The answer is no, it's all about Roe

Democrats have rightly been complaining that GOP rank-and-file support for Sarah Palin demonstrates how hypocritical and/or disingenuous their attacks on Barack Obama's 'inexperience' have been.

I'd like to draw attention, however, to the fact that the army of conservative writers who have leapt to Sarah Palin's defense (notably William Kristol at the Weekly Standard and almost the entire staff of the National Review) include many of the same voices who brought down Harriet Mier's supreme court nomination with bitter accusations that Bush's favorite lawyer was light-weight and unqualified.

Why the 180 degree shift from Miers to Palin? It is now clear (as it was to some even at the time), that conservatives mounted their vigorous assault on Miers not because they thought she was unqualified, but because they were worried she wasn't conservative enough, and, especially, that she did not offer a reliable vote against Roe vs. Wade. With Palin, on the other hand, there is no question about her opposition to abortion rights, which is as extreme as can be. That the conservative commentariat's reactions to Palin and Miers have diverged so dramatically offers an instructive lesson: in the Republican party, ideology always trumps talent.

Which isn't necessarily such a bad thing, were republican ideology not so frightening. During the Miers controversy, a lot of liberals leapt on the dump Miers bandwagon, heaping praise on her impeccably credentialed--but intractably hard-line--replacement, Samuel Alito. We should all be asking ourselves whether we wouldn't be better off with a dummy like Miers than a villain like Alito.