You have a very selective memory.
The National Review brat pack likened Miers to Caligula's horse and Barney the dog, and Peggy Noonan referred to her as Bush's office wife.
"They've turned a woman whose credentials for the Supreme Court matched or outpaced those of William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor into the image of a naive, untested first-year law student. "
Oh come now. I'm sure Rehnquist could at least write a declarative sentence that didn't induce catatonia. And we didn't want another Sandra Day so comparing qualifications to a weak link is no favor.
Harriet's writing was atrocious, would have been a laughingstock.
I was disgusted by some of the things they said about Miers. Personally, I thought she should have had a chance to have her say in the hearings, but even if people wanted to prevent this from happening, they certainly didn't have to be so vicious and crazy-sounding. It did not leave me with much respect for some of the pundits (Coulter, Kristol, Noonan, etc.), and the things that came from Freepers - who I daresay were all going on 3rd hand "information" gleaned from these same pundits - really shocked me.
If movement conservatives want to maintain their power, they had better think about that. They own Washington today. They've proved that. Now, they'd better run it right.
No more whining.
"likened Miers to Caligula's horse and Barney the dog"
please get the quotes, maybe I slept through my reading of their usual reasoned discouse.
As for Peggy Noonan, I never read her. I know she is a conservative, I just find her more of a conservative by ideology and not by intellect; and being a newspaper columnists maybe she was playing off the "cronyism" line, in as much Harriet has been a Bush legal counsel for years, prior to his administration.
I still believe that any personal attacks were few and far between. Most of the disourse dealth with the issues of qualifications.