Another Bad Day At The Bush White House

President Bush and Karl Rove are going to have a really bad day.  Here's how I know. 

Much like Karl probably does every day, the first thing I did this morning was peek in over at Townhall.com.  Now bear in mind, the only place that Karl could usually find any friendlier an audience toward "W" would be at a Bush family retreat at Crawford or Kennebunkport.

But not today.  If you take a look at their latest opinion alert, here's what you'll find:

Michelle Malkin attacks Bush for expecting the right to be satisfied with what she calls the "coffee and donuts" defense:

President Bush tells us that he knows his White House counsel Harriet Miers' heart. I have no doubt that it is a good one. But a good heart does not a great Supreme Court justice make.

More Malkin:

But asking conservatives to trust that the blank-slate Miers not only has well-formed views on everything from property rights, the individual right to bear arms and the proper scope of privacy rights, to the Commerce Clause, racial preferences and presidential authority in wartime -- but also has the intellectual candlepower to persuade her potential colleagues -- based on little more than her Sunday refreshment-retrieving abilities is asking way too much.

Jonah Goldberg weighs in saying:

There has indeed been much gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth over the nomination of Harriet Miers, but it has been almost exclusively on the political right.

More Goldberg:

But President Bush has put himself in the awkward position of asking his base to trust him at precisely the moment the base was expecting Bush to demonstrate their trust was well-founded in the first place. For this reason and others, the Miers nomination has opened up several criss-crossing fissures on the right: East Coast credentialists vs. outside-the-beltway populists, Bush loyalists vs. conservative movement activists.

The press will spend a lot of time wondering what the Democrats will do. But for now the more interesting question is, what will the Republicans do?

Rich Lowry assails Bush with this:

President Bush struck a blow for diversity on the Supreme Court by picking White House Counsel Harriet Miers as his latest nominee. Bush thus made a strong statement that the Court has room for highly distinguished justices and not-so-distinguished justices, for nominees who have made their reputations in the wider legal world and for nominees people have hardly heard of, for world-class lawyers and for lawyers he happens to know and like.

And then ends with this kicker:

Now it looks like the latest act of an overly insular, increasingly off-key White House.

And George Will's critique can best be summarized by the headline:

Miers is the wrong pick

So will Karl worry about all this because it means Miers won't get confirmed?  I doubt it. 

But what it does mean is the the ardor of the right for President Bush could very well be cooled forever.  Their zeal is all that has been propping this President up above the point of absolute public embarassment.  A serious erosion of his base would absolutely impact his ability to pursue any sort of meaningful agenda over the next three years.

And it also means that the 2008 Republican primaries could easily devolve into a contest to prove who is the most worthy and faithful candidate of the right wing.  And that part bodes extremely well for Democrats.