Miers quits court bid

WASHINGTON – Denied his first choice, President Bush scrambled on Thursday to find a new Supreme Court nominee who could calm a conservative rebellion and walk sure-footed through a Senate confirmation hearing.

That could point to a handful of federal judges believed to have been finalists when Bush made his doomed choice of White House counsel Harriet Miers.

Some top contenders are believed to be federal appellate judges Samuel Alito, Michael Luttig, Harvie Wilkinson, Alice Batchelder, Priscilla Owen and Karen Williams, as well as Michigan Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan.

Or Bush could turn to a current or past senator, such as Republican John Cornyn of Texas, believing the Senate would be more likely to embrace one of its own.

In a striking defeat for Bush, Miers withdrew her nomination on Thursday after three weeks of brutal criticism from GOP conservatives.

Miers said she abandoned her quest for confirmation because the Senate was demanding documents and information detailing her private advice to the president. “I am concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House,” she wrote.

Senior lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee said they had requested no such documents. Instead, Republicans and Democrats said politics forced her to withdraw, particularly the demands of GOP conservatives who twice elected Bush and now seek to move the high court to the right on abortion and other issues.

Miers, a Texas lawyer and Bush confidante who remains White House counsel, was criticized for having thin credentials on constitutional law and no proven record as a judicial conservative.

That criticism lessens the chance that Bush will pick someone else who has never rapped a gavel on a judicial bench. It also makes it less likely that the president will choose anyone who could be tagged a Bush crony, according to lawyers in regular touch with White House officials involved in the selection process.

“I think that the president is likely to return to the short-list of people that everyone left to right agreed are the most qualified,” said Brad Berenson, a former staff member of the White House counsel’s office in the Bush administration.

“The lesson of the Roberts and Miers nominations taken together is that there’s considerable safety and power in selecting people whose qualifications can’t be questioned.”

Associated Press

Harriet Miers arrives at the White House on Thursday after withdrawing her nomination to the Supreme Court.