Why Miers failed

(Hat tip: Jonathan Last.)

The Daily Kos, run by Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, offers this comment:

The tipping point came within the past several days. GOP Senators privately communicated to WH CoS Andy Card that unless they had access to hard evidence that Miers was conversant in constitutional issues, there was no way she would be confirmed. Her performance in private meetings was weak, at best, these senators told Card.

...Miers wasn't done in from a lack of conservative cred as the wingers want to believe. Bush was convinced she was like him and would've fought for her all the way through. She was done in from simple incompetence. Her responses to committee questions betrayed a complete lack of understanding of constitutional law. Her meager writings were incoherent. She was unable to articulate competence in meetings with senators. Give Miers the same set of facts but with Judge Roberts' obvious competence on legal issues, and she gets confirmed. She wasn't done in because the crazies flipped. She was done in because she simply wasn't competent to sit on the High Court and it was so painfully obvious.

The Daily Kos is not known for its blind, unquestioning support of the Republican party. It seems Miers would have been voted down because she lacked the ability to act as a Justice on the Supreme Court, and not because the "extreme right wing" didn't like her.