Is the Miers nomination the beginning of the end for Bush’s coalition?

In the Sunday New York Times, Frank Rich says, “The Miers nomination, whatever its fate, will be remembered as the flashpoint when the faith-based Bush base finally started to lose faith in our propaganda president and join the apostate American majority.” Click here to read this if you’re not a Times subscriber.

Robert Novak mentions as in aside in his “Hurricane Harriet” article, that, in securing the support of 80 or so senators prior to announcing the Miers nomination, Bush gave the impression that his candidate would be federal Circuit Judge Consuelo Callahan of California!

The Conservative Voice labels Bush a liar and in the same breath Pat Buchanan evokes JFK in questioning Bush’s logic in the nomination.

E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post examines the issue of religion and why it is such an important factor to conservatives throughout the government. He uses examples such as Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, who declared that he wasn’t sure about Miers’ positions, but “I know the individual who led her to the Lord.”

OK, so Miers may be the smartest person George W. Bush has ever met, but even Ann Coulter says in a Sunday editorial “Mr. Bush has no right to say ‘Trust me,'” insisting that he would have been better off nominating his dog, Barney.

The sentiment throughout the Sunday Week in Review section of the NY Times seems to be that the Miers nomination “threatens to shatter” the Rove-designed Bush coalition.

Marvin and Peter Olasky, in a midweek editorial in the LA Times, later reprinted in other newspapers echo the sentiments of David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, who said after Miers’ nomination: “The pressures on a Supreme Court justice to shift leftward are intense.” Will Miers uphold Bush’s promise that “Harriet will not change.”

And finally, ConservativeHQ.com issued a poll of 83 conservative leaders and 83 percent of them said that Bush does not govern as a conservative should.