Making Sense of the Senseless

I have been attempting to understand why the Bush Administration has nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. It goes against what my understanding, and that of many others was, about what the Administration would do. I assumed that the first candidate would be something of a moderate, to make it harder for the Dems to oppose him/her. This seemed to be the case for Roberts. What I expected afterwards, however, was for Bush to nominate a true blue conservative, in the Scalia mold. This would have been because having already put one candidate in the court, putting a second in would be easier, mostly because the Dems would have a harder time resisting a second time around. So why then Miers? I can think of only a single, logical reason: Bush chose as his nominee the only person on their short list who wanted to suffer the ordeal, and who was considered to be 100% Pro-Life. That is the only logical conclusion I have come to. The talk of how Miers goes to a strong Evangelical church only cemented this in my mind. Miers and Bush would have had some close personal contact in the past, and I suspect this lead Bush to be convinced that she was against Roe. Not wanting to have another O'Connor who appeared to be against Roe but wasn't when it came down to it, Bush nominated the person he was sure was pro-life, rather than taking a gamble on someone else. Its possible other social issues may factor in as well, but Roe is the big one. And I expect the Dems to pick up on it should the GOP somehow support Bush on this one in the Senate.