Ahh, no wonder Bush has a soft spot for Harriet Miers. It's not because of any fielty to social issues -- I suspect Bush wouldn't give a damn about abortion or gays if there was no political advantage to demagoging those issue.
Nah, he hearts Miers because she's a corporate crony.
In case anyone thought Harriet Miers wasn't a corporate-shill-in-White-House-clothing, take a gander at how Miers did her best Ken Lay impression while heading a major Texas corporate law firm. That's right, according to the 5/1/00 newsletter Class Action Reporter, Miers headed Locke, Liddell & Sapp at the time the firm was forced to pay $22 million to settle a suit asserting that "it aided a client in defrauding investors."
The details of the case are both nauseating and highly troubling, considering President Bush is considering putting Miers at the top of America's legal system. Under Miers' leadership, the firm represented the head of a "foreign currency trading company [that] was allegedly a Ponzi scheme." The law firm admitted that it "knew in March 1998 that $8 million in [the company's] losses hadn't been reported to investors" but didn't tell regulators.
This wasn't an isolated incident, either. The Austin American-Statesman reported in 2001 that Miers' law firm was forced to pay another $8 million for a similar scheme to defraud investors. The suit, which dealt with actions the firm took under Miers in the late 1990s, was again quite troubling. As the 9/20/00 Texas Lawyer reported, Miers' firm helped a now-convicted con man "defraud investors and allowed the firm's [bank] account to be used as a 'conduit.'" The suit said "money from investors that went into the firm's trust account was deposited into [the con man's] bank accounts and was used to pay for his 'expensive toys.'"
So Bush tosses the social conservatives overboard. He doesn't need them anymore. He doesn't need to be reelected. And yeah, he fucks Republicans running in 2006 by demoralizing their shock troops, but what does he care? His world is that of corporate cronyism, not culture wars. And as long as his homeys are taken care of, the rest can go to hell for all he cares.
Viewed from that prism, chosing Miers makes perfect sense.