Breaking news in this hour. Miers to withdraw her nomination to the Supreme Court. More to come.

UPDATE: 1:57pm

The Hotline, subscription only, as always has more background information on the Miers withdrawal. The important points surround the reasoning, which we’re told to believe is simply because they are trying to protect privilege, but in actuality

Another close Bush adviser [said]: “Publicly, they are going to say it is over protecting executive privilege. Privately, you have an accomplished woman who probably isn’t going to do well in the hearing, so why put her through that?”

So she wasn’t going to do well in the hearings, perhaps what this advisor is really trying to say is that her ability to speak on Constitutional issues was weak at best, having poor showings in conversations even with conservatives.

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 Bush. Throughout the day, says a senior Senate aide, there were “conversations throughout the day at the staff level.” Late yesterday, Senate Maj. Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) called Card and told him in no uncertain terms that Miers would probably not be confirmed. An aide: “He provided frank assessment of situation in the Senate. [The] lay of land on committee.” After that call, according to White House sources, Bush and Card met privately with Miers, and they decided jointly that preserving WH privilege on documents was too important a principle to risk.

So, not only were her conservative bona-fides being questioned, but also her ability to give thoughtful opinions a Senator would expect from a Supreme Court Justice on the Constitution. From the beginning my feeling with Miers was that of inexperience and being unqualified based on previous experience. It bothered me then when some Democrats used it as an opportunity to get a less conservative justice. However if the press tacks on to the story of her withdrawal because of these shortcomings, then we have Harry Reid saying

The radical right wing of the Republican Party killed the Harriet Miers nomination. Apparently, Ms. Miers did not satisfy those who want to pack the Supreme Court with rigid ideologues.

Democrats need to keep the “celebration” on this one quiet, because it shouldn’t be present. If she was unqualified we shouldn’t be putting our necks out there, I’m seeing some blogs saying what happened to confirm them all, and everything, and yes of course the hypocrisy here is great. But if this woman was unqualified, which I think some of us believe she was, then there’s no reason for us to say anything that could come back to haunt us.