THAT TEARS IT

My favorite John Wayne movie, which many critics (including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg) consider to be the greatest Western motion picture ever made, is The Searchers, directed by John Ford.

Wayne, in his lifetime best performance, plays Ethan Edwards, whose brother and sister-in-law have been murdered and their two daughters kidnapped by raiding Comanches. He joins a posse searching for his two nieces, led by a Texas Ranger who’s also a preacher, the Reverend Samuel Clayton (played by Ward Bond), and Wayne doesn’t like his leadership.

The last straw for Wayne is when the posse is attacked by the Comanches, who are fought off, whereupon Clayton prevents Wayne from getting off a last shot. Wayne glowers in rage, and yells in barely controlled fury, “Well, Reverend, that tears it!” He leaves the posse to go search for his nieces alone.

Harriet Miers tears it for me with George Bush. It’s the last straw. John Roberts was no straw at all. Clearly a conservative constitutionalist, overwhelmingly brilliant and qualified, he was an inspired choice. Objections to him by certain conservatives were paranoid.

But we are going from the sublime to the ridiculous with Miss Miers. This ludicrous nomination is the bottom of Bush’s barrel.

It is as ludicrous for Bush to claim that she is more qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice than J. Harvie Wilkinson, Janice Rogers Brown, or any of a score of distinguished conservative candidates, as it is unbelievable for him to claim that he “knows her heart” but has never discussed abortion with her.

Yet there is good to come of it: in the form of a conservative Congressional rebellion. The good that is coming out of Bush’s inept Katrina performance is an end to profligate spending, and deep (hopefully real deep) cuts in both discretionary and mandated programs.

In his press conference today (the 4th), Bush predicted Miers will do well in her Senate hearings. She may never get to them. The outcry from Republicans on Capitol Hill may get so loud so quick that Bush may be forced to withdraw her nomination. That will provide the chance to rebuild the Bush Presidency.

There should be four pillars of such a reconstruction. Obviously the first would be a competently qualified SCOTUS nomination. Then comes Bush succumbing to demands to halt illegal immigration. Follow this by slicing and dicing the federal budget, and by winning the War in Iraq by taking the war into terrorist sanctuaries in Syria and Iran.

At the end of The Searchers, Wayne joins forces again with Clayton to wipe out the Comanche band and rescue the surviving niece (Debbie, played by Natalie Wood). But if Wayne hadn’t rebelled earlier, he wouldn’t have been able to determine the identity and location of the Comanche band, enabling the cooperative rescue.

Likewise, now is the golden opportunity for a conservative rebellion against Bush – not to destroy the Bush Presidency but to revive and save it. Carpe diem.