Hell hath no scorn like that of a voter betrayed.

I don't think that Harriet Miers nomination was such a dramatic matter so much as she was the straw that broke the camel's back. Reforming the Supreme Court was all that Bush had left. He had fumbled the previous seat with John Roberts, just the sort of respectable conservative who will go along with mushy (socialist) decisions having no basis in the Constitution, and Bush had no intention of doing any better with the next vacancy. He chose Miers because she's an Evangelical -- as a bone to the base -- and a crony. No crony of George Bush will be a strict constitutionalist, because Bush is no more one than Bill Clinton is, his claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Heck, if conservative Constitutional principles, not to mention diversity meant so much to him, he never would have left Miguel Estrada to twist in the wind. That talk about choosing a strict constructionist in the mold of a Scalia or Thomas was just that. You have to keep in mind that this is a man whose idea of a solon, who he really wanted to nominate to the Supreme Court, is Attorney General Al Gonzales, who doesn’t seem to have ever read the U.S. Constitution.

I wasn’t the only observer who not too long ago hoped Bush would nominate Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the court, possibly even for Chief Justice. But no, our Fearless Leader said, ‘To hell with the Constitution!’

After alibiing for him and cutting him slack for four years-and-change, the Miers nomination rubbed conservatives' noses in the crap. It was a personal humiliation, because it wiped away all the makeup that had obscured the true face of Bushism as an unprincipled regime of cronyism and plutocracy. And so, the anger so long suppressed about affirmative action, legal and illegal immigration (particularly his Amnesty plan), spending, big government, his racial pandering/War on Poverty II proposal following the savagery in New Orleans, and a host of other matters is coming out in a package as part of the opposition to Harriet Miers. Some GOP pundits think Bush will be forced to withdraw this nomination, but he’ll do no such thing. He’ll ram it through. And he'd better enjoy it, too, because it's going to be his last bit of fun for a while.

I don't know about you, but I feel like I've been played for a fool by George W. Bush.

Millions of conservatives have to stop identifying with the GOP, and see it merely as more or less useful. That means withholding votes (or staying home on Election Day), voting for candidates from other parties, if they seem more promising (say on immigration), and concentrating on direct, independent action such as local activism, state referenda, and Minute Man-style interventions. Some will doubtless give into the temptation to break their law. After all, Bush called the perfectly legal, not to mention heroic work of the Minutemen “vigilantism,” all the while explicitly condoning and encouraging all manner of illegal behavior. For many, it may also mean tending their own garden, and saying the hell with politics.

Maybe my memory will be washed away in a few years by the treachery of so many later politicians, but the way things look to me right now, I'll never forget the Bush betrayal.