Some conservatives are enraged at the gift to her of a lifetime seat on the nation's highest legislative body. (Which it is: judicial plus legislative.) I doubt conservative rage, to the extent it spreads, will determine the fate of this nomination.
The president has chosen Harriet Miers because 1) he had to have, or thought he had to have, a woman nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor; such a woman as 2) could endure and pass Democratic scrutiny.
An Edith Jones of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals -- staunch conservative as she is -- would have lured the pro-Roe v. Wade, anti-Bush wolves from their dens to rip her apart. Harriet Miers? The wolves may snarl and howl, but as juicy meals go, a recordless, viewpointless lady lawyer from Dallas seems unlikely -- or must seem so to the president -- to invite ferocious attack.
The Democrats, watching a Bush friend advance to the high court, will certainly cry cronyism. Various conservatives will cry phony-ism. Where, they will want to know, is the Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas the president promised to appoint when he had the chance? Harriet Miers as Scalia? It could be. It just doesn't look, shall we say, highly probable.
But on that account, the Democrats may issue her a pass, hoping she might prove as amenable to the Democratic agenda -- affirmative action, gay rights, abortion rights -- as Sandra Day O'Connor occasionally proved. That's what it's seemingly all about in a divided nation: who, on a given day, can win.