"She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met."

From ABC News:

Miers was Bush's personal lawyer in Texas and took on the tough job of cleaning up the Texas Lottery when he was governor. She followed him to Washington, first serving as White House staff secretary and then deputy chief of staff before being named to replace Alberto Gonzales, who was named U.S. attorney general, as counsel to the president.

Born and raised in Dallas, Miers, 60, earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a law degree from Southern Methodist University. In addition to her legal career, she served one term on the Dallas City Council.

The White House and Miers' supporters praise her as a trailblazer and a pioneer in the legal field. The first woman hired by the prestigious Dallas law firm Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, she also was the first female president of the Dallas Bar Association and the first female president of the Texas Bar Association.

Miers met Bush in the 1980s, according to published reports, and was counsel for his 1994 campaign for governor. He appointed her chair of the Texas Lottery Commission in 1995. Miers then was president of Locke, Purnell, Rain & Harrell and co-managing partner of Locke Liddell & Sapp before she joined the White House in 2001....

Miers, who has never been married and does not have any children, is known for putting in long hours without complaint. She has revealed little about her own emotions or ideology, but has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Bush administration on a broad number of initiatives including tax cuts, Social Security reforms, restrictions on federal spending on embryonic stem-cell research, national security, education reforms and fighting terrorism.

According to a blog by former White House speechwriter David Frum, Miers has been known for her loyalty and will not make headlines as a Supreme Court associate justice.

"In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met," Frum's blog said. "She served Bush well, but she is not the person to lead the court in new directions — or to stand up under the criticism that a conservative justice must expect."

Never married? Interesting. Is anyone going to say anything about that? Thinks Bush is the most brilliant man she had ever met? Well, that's just weird. Or, really, sycophantic.

Let's check out that Frum blog:

The Miers nomination ... is an unforced error. Unlike the Roberts's nomination, which confirmed the previous balance on the Court, the O'Connor resignation offered an opportunity to change the balance. This is the moment for which the conservative legal movement has been waiting for two decades--two decades in which a generation of conservative legal intellects of the highest ability have moved to the most distinguished heights in the legal profession. On the nation's appellate courts, in legal academia, in private practice, there are dozens and dozens of principled conservative jurists in their 40s and 50s unassailably qualified for the nation's highest Court. Yes, Democrats might have complained. But if Democrats had gone to war against a Michael Luttig or a Sam Alito or a Michael McConnell, they would have had to fight without weapons: the personal and intellectual excellence of these candidates would have made it obvious that the Democrats' only real principle was a kind of legal Brezhnev doctrine: that the Court's balance must remain forever what it was in the days when Democrats had a majority of the votes in the U.S. Senate--in other words, what we have, we hold. Not a very attractive doctrine, and not very winnable either....

I worked with Harriet Miers. She's a lovely person: intelligent, honest, capable, loyal, discreet, dedicated ... I could pile on the praise all morning. But nobody would describe her as one of the outstanding lawyers in the United States. And there is no reason at all to believe either that she is a legal conservative or--and more importantly--that she has the spine and steel necessary to resist the pressures that constantly bend the American legal system toward the left.

I am not saying that she is not a legal conservative. I am not saying that she is not steely. I am saying only that there is no good reason to believe either of these things.

So the conservatives are unhappy. Will this make the Democrats back off? Or will this encourage them to take the opportunity to win one?