President's fair-weather friends turn on Meirs

From the SF Chronicle:

Miers takes the heat as Bush's ratings fall President's fair-weather friends rise from their armchairs and turn on his nominee

Martin F. Nolan

The scandal overwhelms whatever Judith Miller and the New York Times did or did not do. It is a sordid Washington saga about the capital's oldest profession, journalism. The conservative commentariat, in full shriek about President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers, is attacking the Texas lawyer and longtime family friend of the president, but the real target is Bush himself. He has disappointed his critics on the right by becoming unpopular.

(snip)

These right-wing critics, many intelligent and sophisticated, are guided by the French slogan "sauve qui peut," which might roughly be translated as "stab the wounded." If his reputation sinks, theirs might, too. Bush's former friends treat him as not only a lame duck, but as a walking bucket of avian flu.

A war poorly explained and badly run could not derail their devotion, nor could a shaky economy. As war and weather plague the president and perils lurk in Baghdad and a Washington grand jury room, the Miers nomination offers former sycophants an exit strategy.

If Bush were 25 or 30 points higher in the polls, the right's television troubadours and op-ed bards would still be describing Miers as Mother Teresa and Madame Curie combined.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/23/INGPIFACKQ1.DTL

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I sure love it when they start eating their own.

but they sure had the wit to go after clinton. they sure figgered out the oj simpson deal. they never lost a moment to chase princess di, until she got killed. they have a select target group, and there's nothing on earth stop these lying bastards from persecuting anyone whom their bullyboy jackboot mentality chooses to exploit, but when it comes to the most important things happening in the country, they routinely and predictably lie and obscure and interfere with public understanding?
i see, said the blind man...

Mangling French (purposeful or not) is one of my pet peeves.