Regular readers of GetReligion may recall one of my tenets for MSM coverage of religion, politics and culture: The Religious Right must lose. Or stated the other way, above all else, the Religious Right must not be allowed to win. It is easy, if you keep that in mind, to understand why the MSM seems so confused right now in the wake of the Harriet Miers nomination and all that came in its wake.

Did the Religious Right back Miers? Yes.

Did the Religious Right oppose Miers? Yes.

Did the old-guard mainstream right (including some who back abortion rights) back Miers? Yes.

Did the old-guard mainstream right (including some who back abortion rights) oppose Miers? Yes.

Now the question everyone is trying to answer, right now: When she withdrew, did the Religious Right win or lose?

Stay with me for one more question. If the Religious Right won this battle, forcing Miers to withdraw, that means that the Religious Right defeated the team of President George W. Bush and Dr. James Dobson (the living symbol of the Religious Right). Correct? Or perhaps, the Religious Right managed to defeat the evil liberal President Bush when information dug out by the MSM convinced Dobson to turn against Miers?

See how confusing this is?

With all of that in mind, you are ready to read a very confusing piece by Kevin Merida in today's Washington Post titled "Miers, the Rebellion's Latest Casualty: Why the Right Never Surrenders, Or Declares Victory."

This piece gets one thing right. Yes, there are people who are conservatives first and Republicans second. But it seems that Merida waved a white flag when it came time to understanding the role that faith and moral issues have played in the modern "conservative movement" (as if there is only one). He also seems to have no idea that there are some moral and cultural conservatives who are not Republicans at all. They are independents or conservative (often Catholic, Hispanic or African-American) Democrats.

It's all so confusing, which is why Merida tells us:

Democrats certainly have their noisy scrums -- the left is either angry at the center for acting like Republicans or the center is blaming the left for election debacles. But the Republican right seems to have a special, disciplined vigilance when it comes to internal warfare. Where else can you find the ironic spectacle of a House speaker being shown the guillotine by the very crew of conservative revolutionaries he created? That was Newt Gingrich's fate in 1998, forced to resign after leading Republicans to the first House majority in four decades.

After reneging on his read-my-lips pledge of "no new taxes," then-President George H.W. Bush found himself hissed and hounded by conservatives and ultimately undermined as he went on to lose his 1992 reelection bid. Even the beloved Ronald Reagan got smacked from time to time by his brethren on the right. An all-star lineup of conservatives went after him over his dealings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his support of a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Howard Phillips, chairman of the Conservative Caucus, went so far as to call the Gipper a "useful idiot for Soviet propaganda." Three decades later, phoning in from the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival, Phillips said: "My loyalty is not to any political personality or any political party."

My friends, there is a ghost in there -- a great big one.

So I will ask one more question, a question that we may or may not know the answer to in a day or so when the tricky President Bush selects another nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. The question is: Is President Bush a cultural conservative or not?

This is a question I have been asking since 2000, when I wrote the following paragraphs. They come from an essay that I wrote in the middle of election day, before the real craziness began. I wrote this for Salon, but the editors turned it down. I guess it was the wrong kind of diversity.

The essay ended up running (wait for it) in World magazine. I guess Marvin Olasky was more open-minded. The headline was "A sad Democrat votes."

Let me be candid. I didn't vote for George W. Bush because I am convinced that he is genuinely pro-life. I have no idea whether he will, in fact, spend any of his precious political poker chips, when push comes to shove, to try to stop abortions or to help the women who are ensnared in crisis pregnancies in a society that mainly wishes they would go away.

I also think Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney are going to march to a basically libertarian drum when it comes to other cultural issues. I think they will be in the middle of the road, watching the polling data, when it comes to sexuality. They aren't going to stomp on gays and lesbians, even though there will be howls from the Lifestyle Left if any efforts are made to withhold the government's blessings from active support of their causes in the arts, education, and law. I think the Religious Right can prepare to be disappointed, along with the Lifestyle Left.

And I think Mr. Bush's court appointees will be much like his picks in Texas -- country-club conservatives who come out of the mainstream of American law schools. They'll probably split 50-50 on the divisive moral issues, just like the folks selected by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

So is Bush a cultural conservative or a company man from the country club? Can the MSM admit that this is the ghost haunting the headlines?