Ann is blogging about the same NYT article that got me going last night. Now another entry in the "make it easy for your critics" category from E.J. Dionne:

[N]ow that Harriet Miers, Bush's latest Supreme Court nominee, is in trouble with conservatives, her religious faith and how she lives that faith are becoming central to the case being made for her by the administration and its supporters. Miers has almost no public record. Don't worry, the administration's allies are telling their friends on the right, she's an evangelical Christian.

Marvin Olasky, a conservative Christian writer who has been a strong Bush supporter, explained his sympathy for Miers. "Maybe it's the judicial implications of her evangelical faith, unseen on the court in recent decades," Olasky wrote on his blog. "Friends who know Miers well testify to her internal compass that includes a needle pointed toward Christ."

James Dobson, the founder and chairman of the evangelical organization Focus on the Family, told Fox News's Brit Hume: "We know people who have known her for 20, 25 years, and they would vouch for her. . . . I know the church that she goes to and I know the people who go to church with her." On the Wednesday edition of his radio show, Dobson was more specific: "I know the individual who led her to the Lord."

Rather mysteriously, Dobson, who was briefed on the nomination by Bush's chief lieutenant, Karl Rove, told Hume: "I do know things that I am not prepared to talk about here." He was equally cagey with the New York Times: "Some of what I know I am not at liberty to talk about." The intrigue whetted the curiosity of Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), who said that "if the White House gives information to James Dobson, that information should be shared equally with the U.S. Senate."

Jay Sekulow, counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, said on Pat Robertson's television show that the Miers nomination was "a big opportunity for those of us who have a conviction, that share an evangelical faith in Christianity, to see someone with our positions put on the court."

The use of Miers's religion as a magnet for conservative support is not just the work of a few religious voices. It's part of the administration's strategy. The New York Times reported that the White House put Judge Nathan L. Hecht, Miers's close friend and a fellow member of Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, "on at least one conference call with influential social conservative organizers" to testify to her conservative faith.

Let's be clear: It is pro-administration conservatives, not those terrible liberals, who are making an issue of Miers's evangelical faith. Liberals are not opposing Miers because she is an evangelical. Conservatives are telling their friends to support Miers because she is an evangelical.

Many of the early responses to Miers' nomination suggested that she was the product of a weak President who did not want to engage the Senate in a battle over conservative principles. That story doesn't fit my image of President Bush, and the more I hear about the back-office work at the White House, the more I become convinced that the Miers nomination represents exactly the opposite of that story. This is a story of breath-taking arrogance.

I have the right of nomination, and I will choose someone whose primary qualification is my assurance that she will remain true to the faith. If you are loyal, you must confirm.

Hogwash! Send Harriet back.

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