Conservative outrage over President George W. Bush's controversial pick of Texas lawyer Harriet Miers to fill a vacancy on the US Supreme Court was unabated Sunday as activists called on the White House to withdraw her nomination.
Among the most outspoken detractors was former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, who, on NBC television's "Meet the Press" program, said Bush should name someone else to fill the vacancy on the US high court.
"I would like to see the nomination withdrawn. If I were in the Senate today I would vote against it," Buchanan said. "My guess is, she will not be confirmed, and she will be withdrawn."
The Weekly Standard, a bible for dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, on Sunday called the choice of Miers "at best an error, at worst a disaster" which should be reconsidered.
"He has put up an unknown and undistinguished figure for an opening that conservatives worked for a generation to see filled with a jurist of high distinction," the magazine's editor Bill Kristol wrote.
"The best alternative would be for Miers to withdraw," the conservative pundit said. "Her nomination has hurt the president whom she came to Washington to serve."
Conservatives have been harshly critical of Bush's choice of Miers, fearing the president may have blown the best chance in decades for Republicans to move the high court - the arbiter of legal disputes on a wide range of hot-button social issues - definitively to the right.
If confirmed, Miers would fill the seat of retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court and often a critical swing vote on the nine-member panel.
Miers, 60, currently is White House counsel, and served as Bush's personal attorney when he was governor of Texas. Her opinions on abortion and other burning issues are largely unknown and staunch conservatives have said they would have preferred a candidate whose views were clear.
Bush's rightwing supporters are further miffed that in choosing Miers, an old friend and long-time aide, the president passed over several better-known, better-qualified conservative candidates.
The distrust among conservatives is even greater because of a decision in 1990 by Bush's father, president George H.W. Bush, to nominate David Souter to the US high court.
Souter originally was thought to be a bedrock conservative, but in many key Supreme Court votes, he has sided with liberals.
Gleeful Democrats - who have been enjoying the spectacle of Republicans battling amongst themselves - have expressed relief that Bush appears to have avoided a major battle by nominating someone without an avowedly extremist agenda.
Meanwhile, moderate Republicans have stuck by the president, at least outwardly, and decried the rush to dismiss Meirs.
"What you've had here on Harriet Miers is not a rush to judgement. It's a stampede to judgment. She's faced tough - one of the toughest lynch mobs ever assembled in Washington," said Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, speaking on ABC television.
"She's intelligent, she's hard-working, unquestioned integrity. She fought her way up, couldn't get a job when she graduated from law school because she was a woman," Specter said in Miers's defence.
But he indicated there was some cause to worry about the qualifications of Miers, who has never served as a judge.
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