Didn't Ponzi ride a Triumph on "Happy Days"?

A good take on Miss Miers' nomination from a coupla contributors at TPMCafe. First, from Mark Schmitt:

The reaction from the right to the Miers nomination should be a reminder of just why the Rove strategy of playing to the hard-right base is such a dangerous and unwise political choice: There's no turning back from it. It's like a Ponzi scheme, you have to continually borrow new money/enthusiasm to pay off the old, and you can never turn back.

And like any Ponzi scheme, when it collapses, the collapse is total, and absolute. (By the way, I had written this before Ed Kilgore weighed in with his "balloon-mortgage" metaphor below. Choose the metaphor that works for you.)

I don't really understand Harry Reid's earlier comments about Miers, quoted by Sam Rosenfeld: "The reason I like her is that she's the first woman to be president of the very, very large Texas bar association, she was a partner in a law firm, she's actually tried cases, she was a trial lawyer, and she's had experience here. I could accept that. And if that fits into the cronyism argument, I will include everybody as a crony, but not her, when I make my case." Essentially what Reid was saying here is that he's so interested in non-judicial real world experience (anyone who thinks big Texas law firms are the real world, raise your hands) that he thinks that outweighs the crony problem. But it seems to me exactly the opposite: the crony problem ("the most brilliant man she had ever met") vastly outweighs this thin and perfectly ordinary legal experience. There are a thousand Harriett Mierses in the law firms of America, and at this point even a good number of them who are women.

But maybe Reid is cleverer even than I gave him credit for, and just lured Bush into the room with his angry, defrauded investors.

That would be good! In his post, Mr. Kilgore makes a good point:

Sure, it's possible the strategy here is to give the Right what it wants over its loud objections--that she will turn out to be a Thomas rather than a Souter. And I'm definitely not saying Democrats should support her, either.

But at this point, it's going to be Senate Republicans who are demanding more information about Miers; hell, with guys like Coburn in the Senate, we could even see a conservative filibuster effort.

So I think we should just sit back and watch the spectacle on the other side for a while.

I think I need to cop some more popcorn. This might be a good show.