Anchoress says it better than I

She puts to words what I have been feeling since I read Beldar's post about David Frum and the National Review's petition against Miers. She notes that Frum sounded very different about Miers earlier this summer. And then writes:

I’ll tell you what is still, really very obnoxious to me - that I am watching my own side “bork” a respectable conservative woman, before she even gets to speak for herself. Even Robert Bork got to appear before the Judiciary committee. In the case of Harriet Miers, everyone gets to have their loud, shrill and incessant say…except Harriet Miers.

This shames me. This shames me as an American and as a woman and as a conservative.

The right is “borking” this woman and doing their damndest to make sure she does NOT get her opportunity to speak for herself. WHY? Why this need to prevent her from opening her trap? What is everyone so damned afraid of?

There is something so profoundly weird about all of this - ALL of it - that I don’t want things to simply be pulled and quickly hushed up.

She thinks it is great that we can argue, but:

when I see people who are supposed to be all about fairness and openness working so desperately hard to keep a person from having her day in court - for better or worse - then I am very troubled.

When I see people insisting one month that the president is entitled to his nominee and his nominee is entitled to a hearing, and then saying precisely the opposite the next month - then I am very troubled.

Something stinks in Denmark. Something is just really, really wrong here.

And then she hits a home run in summary:

With all due respect to the many, many folks within the stop-Harriet alliance whom I regard as good friends, and fellow-travellers - something is not right here. Some of the rhetoric is out of control, some of the venom is showing uncharacteristic traits, some of the alliance appear to be on the verge of stroke. Some of this hyperventilation seems completely out-of-proportion to the crime of Ms. Miers being nominated to the bench.

The reaction of many to this nomination has gone way beyond intellectual reason and moved into sweaty emotionalism and even spite…where it has never belonged.

It begs the question why. And that question needs a real answer. An answer I suspect we will never get if Miers’ nomination is withdrawn.

A rift this big, a chasm this newly unstable demands explaining.

I too, demand an explanation from the Chicken Littles. How can this nomination be worth the kind of damage you are inflicting on your own side, your own president and your country. During a WAR?!!!