Bush's base ill at ease in dissent

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Some conservatives are saying now that President Bush's withdrawal of the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination was merely an "apparent" victory for conservative critics and only a temporary reprieve for Mr. Bush, whose political base remains ill at ease over a variety of issues not related to the federal judiciary.

These conservatives say Mr. Bush's action on Miss Miers alone will not be enough to heal serious and long-developing rifts largely hidden from public view until the imbroglio over her high court nomination.

One such rift is between determined Bush loyalists on the right and those interest-group leaders who say the conservative movement is larger than either Mr. Bush or the Republican Party.

Until the Miers issue exploded on the scene, these critics had remained quiet about their strong disagreements with the president. The Miers nomination led high-profile conservatives such as Richard Viguerie, Phyllis Schlafly and Paul M. Weyrich to break publicly for the first time with Mr. Bush. That in turn angered the president's defenders.

"I'm sick and tired of you people stirring things up against George W. Bush the minute he does something you don't completely agree with, when he has just given you 20 things you do agree with," longtime activist Jim Martin shouted at some fellow conservatives who had just spoken out against Mr. Bush during a tumultuous strategy session last week.

The objects of his ire dismissed his complaints and those of other Bush defenders as coming from "shills for the White House."

Such infighting could get uglier, both sides say, depending on what Mr. Bush does on a number of fronts, starting with his next pick for the Supreme Court.

The choice of Miss Miers was significant because, conservatives critics agreed, it caused some on the right to go public for the first time with their criticism of Mr. Bush, blaming him directly for a major decision he made instead of blaming it on White House advisers, administration aides or renegade Republicans in Congress.

"Withdrawing Miers put a Band-Aid on the rift," says George Conway III, a New York lawyer who is beginning to emerge as one of the new generation of conservative-activist leaders. "That rift now is healed and will be reopened only if he makes the same mistake twice -- then the Band-Aid will come right off."

"Miers was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back among conservatives," says Mr. Conway, who worked behind the scenes against President Clinton during the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky scandals.