Laura comes out swinging (with help)

Thought my conservatives-are-sexists charge was over the top? What if First Lady Laura Bush says it on the Today Show? Of course, she only said that it's "possible" not fact like I claimed. But how about Eddie Gillespie, once RNC chair and one of the President's top men on the Sumpreme Court vetting team? Ed "raised the sexism issue in a private meeting with conservatives last week, participants said, prompting hot denials that caused Gillespie to say he was speaking generally, not referring to anyone in the room. Since then, other Republican backers of the nominee have raised the possibility that Miers's sex is causing her to be judged by a harsher standard."

Of course, that didn't sit too well with conservatives, who don't like to be called out. "It is striking to me they are spending less time explaining the merits of Harriet Miers and more time . . . using liberal talking points to criticize the critics," William Kristol of the Weekly Standard said. "I think it is going to backfire." Did I just hear Kristol say that the White House is using Liberal talking points? The only worse epithet he could have used against Bush was to say he was acting Clintonian. Jonah Goldberg of the National Review's blog (another super conservative rag) echoed Kristol's sentiments, calling the sexism charge as "horribly disappointing and the sort of thing I normally expect from left-wingers."

This food fight just keeps getting better and better. Appearantly GOP Judiciary staffers are rebelling as well.

"Everybody is hoping that something will happen on Miers, either that the president would withdraw her or she would realize she is not up to it and pull out while she has some dignity intact," a lawyer to a Republican committee member said.

It sounds like they don't want Bush's Senate henchmen to go after them, but Colburn and Brownback's staff are pissed.

"You could say there is pretty much uniform disappointment with the nomination at the staff level," another Republican on the committee staff said. "It is clear there is quite a bit of skepticism, and even some flashes of hostility." Another Republican aide close to the committee said, "I don't know a staffer who approves of this nomination, anywhere. Most of it is outright hostility throughout the Judiciary Committee staff." ...
"I think those staffers, like anybody else, have a right to their opinions and to express them," [Specter] said. "Senators will make independent judgments. You have some pretty strong staffers on the committee, but you have got some stronger senators."

Maybe it is Specter's staffers after all, as Ed Kilgore thinks. "Maybe the White House's well-known injunctions to Specter to get along better with conservatives are producing some unintended and ironic consequences." quoth Ed.

The plot thickens.