US: President George Bush yesterday brushed aside conservative gripes about his nomination of Harriet Miers to the supreme court, describing her as "an extraordinary, accomplished woman who has done a lot".
Mr Bush predicted that the Senate would confirm the nomination despite threats from some Republicans to vote against Ms Miers on the grounds that she is unqualified and lacks a strong, conservative judicial philosophy.
"Not only am I convinced that she'll be confirmed, I'm convinced that she'll be a fine, great judge. And I'm convinced that . . . she won't change. I mean, the person I know is not the kind of person that is going to change her philosophy. And her philosophy is, is that she is not going to legislate from the bench," he said.
The president was speaking on NBC's Today programme during a visit to Covington, Louisiana, where he and First Lady Laura Bush joined volunteers building homes for evacuees from Hurricane Katrina.
Mr Bush said that some critics were unhappy with the nomination because Ms Miers, currently White House counsel and formerly the president's personal lawyer, was not part of the judicial establishment.
"I made a decision to put somebody on the court who hadn't been a part of what they call the 'judicial monastery' . . . And I figured that people are going to kind of question whether or not it made sense to bring somebody from outside the court," he said.
Laura Bush, who had pressed for a female nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, suggested that some critics of Ms Miers were motivated by sexism.
"I think that's possible . . . I think people are not looking at her accomplishments and not realising that she was the first elected woman to be the head of the Texas Bar Association, for instance, and all the other things," Ms Bush said.
Conservative lawyers have poured scorn on Ms Miers's background as a corporate lawyer and on her alleged lack of intellectual depth, citing her statement last week that her favourite reading was John Grisham thrillers.
Karl Rove has distanced himself from the nomination, leaving unchallenged newspaper reports that the decision was made when he was ill and that it was the idea of his rival for the president's ear, White House chief of staff Andrew Card.
Conservative activists accuse Mr Bush of betraying their trust by passing up an opportunity to appoint an intellectual heavyweight to bolster the supreme court's most conservative justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
With Republicans holding 55 of the Senate's 100 seats, the nomination of Ms Miers is more likely than not to be confirmed after hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
But the gathering storm of protest from conservative activists has caused some Republican senators to waver and the Washington Times reported this week that 27 Republicans had doubts about the nomination.
David Frum, a conservative commentator and former White House speech-writer, predicted that enough Republican senators would reflect conservative anger to ensure that the nomination failed. "I don't think she's going to win, and if she does win, it's going to be after a horrific and expensive and costly political fight for the president," he said.
William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, has called on Ms Miers to withdraw, arguing that the ensuing embarrassment for Mr Bush would be more short-lived and less damaging than the breach with his conservative base which her appointment would provoke.
Ms Miers's lack of judicial experience offers little incentive for Democrats to endorse her nomination and most are likely to vote against her.
If Ms Miers does withdraw, Mr Bush could face a tough battle in pushing through a more right-wing nominee, but conservatives argue that a deal between Republicans and Democrats earlier this year makes a filibuster unlikely, so a new nomination would only need the support of 50 senators and the casting vote of vice-president Dick Cheney.