Why Sarah Palin Didn't Get the Harriet Miers Treatment

E.J. Dionne can't resist comparing John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate to President Bush's attempt to put Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court. “Palin is, if anything, less qualified for the vice presidency (and the presidency) than Miers was for the court,” Dionne argues in the Washington Post. But Palin is getting a pass from the same conservatives who blocked Miers, because she’s a proven right-winger.

Conservatives who trashed Miers for "lack of judicial grounding" were really bothered, he posits, because they thought she might be a "closet moderate." Inexperience, apparently, is “irrelevant” this time—though very little is known about Palin, and McCain only met her twice before picking her. "McCain is asking us to roll the dice,” Dionne concludes. “You'd think that people who call themselves conservative would have a problem with that.” (More Sarah Palin stories.)