Why Conservatives Oppose Miers

It seems a mystery why so many conservatives are opposed to the Miers nomination. There is one reason that makes sense: Republicans do not want to overturn Roe.

The issue has electrified their conservative base. It brings them to the polls. For hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of single-issue voters, they vote Republican for one reason: they oppose abortion.

Now imagine if this issue were taken away. What might those single-issue voters turn to? Education? Health care? Maybe even the death penalty? For Republicans, the abortion issue is useful to them only so long as it is legal.

And therefore it makes sense that one real reason conservatives oppose Miers is because she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.

There are other reasons that they might oppose her, such as her inexperience with Constitutional law. Or the fact that Bush's track record of placing "good friends" in high government positions has literally proven to be disastrous (read, "Michael Brown" or "George Tenet"). But the only reason that really makes sense to me is the idea that Republicans do not want to overturn Roe because they will lose an electrifying issue.

Losing the abortion issue would even have the opposite effect: handing the Democrats an equally electrifying issue for their base. The fact that abortion is currently legal means thousands of would-be single-issue voters for choice can afford to be complacent or apathetic. Suddenly, faced with thousands of women whose coat-hanger stories of botched abortions in the newspapers would drive them to the polls to legalize abortion again.

That is not something the Republicans ever want to see.