Rah Rah (Yawn) Rah

Via The Agitator comes a link to a Newsweek story about a "brain trust" network of conservative lawyers and scholars handpicked by the White House to cheerlead for Bush's judicial nominees. And (according to some leaked e-mails between them) even they can't stand Harriet Miers. Abigail Thernstrom (vice chair of U.S. Civil Rights Commission, chosen by Bush): "As for undermining trust in the president, I am afraid he has accomplished that all on his own—without any help from us." Michael Carvin (who argued Bush v. Gore!): "This is becoming more embarrassing as every day passes." But this is my favorite:

"It no longer matters whether she's the second coming of John Marshall; the cronyism charge has stuck, bec. [sic] it's so obviously true," wrote Michael Greve, a legal scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Greve wondered what was next. Would Bush, he asked, replace Fed chair Alan Greenspan with "a young lady in the basement of the West Wing who did a terrific job on the TX Railroad Commission [and was the] first Armenian bond trader in Dallas …"

Then from a New York Times piece running today, we've got Republican staffers and attorneys on the Judiciary Committee offering up comments like this:

Everybody is hoping that something will happen on Miers, either that the president would withdraw her or she would realize she is not up to it and pull out while she has some dignity intact.

And this:

I don't know a staffer who approves of this nomination, anywhere. Most of it is outright hostility throughout the Judiciary Committee staff.