AMERICAN conservatives fear that Harriet Miers, the Supreme Court nominee, is a politically unreliable feminist who cannot be trusted with a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court.

Behind the attacks on her supposed lack of experience, intellect and judgment lies the suspicion that she is not a true Republican. Laura Bush, the first lady, has suggested sexism may be to blame for the attacks on her, but conservative women have been as critical as men.

The White House is resisting pressure to withdraw her nomination and is to step up the charm offensive on her behalf this week. But the more conservatives learn about Miers, the more opposition to her hardens.

In 1988 Miers donated $1,000 to the presidential campaign of the Democrat Al Gore. That was before she became a born-again Christian and began working for her “cool” Republican boss, George W Bush — “the best governor ever” of Texas, as she described him.

Yet to the alarm of rightwingers, she went on to champion feminists, and her Texas law firm donated money to Hillary Clinton’s Democrat Senate election campaign in 2000.

Miers helped to found a women’s studies lecture series at the Southern Methodist University law school, her alma mater, in honour of the lawyer Louise Raggio, a champion of women’s rights in Texas. The first lecture, in 1998, was delivered by Gloria Steinem, one of America’s most celebrated feminists.

Two years later Susan Faludi, author of the bestselling feminist text Backlash, delivered the annual address.

Faludi said Miers, 60, was a new victim of the backlash. “The Republican religious right is prepared to pay lip service to strong independent women as long as they can be relied upon to act against women’s rights. The moment they are not sure their gal is going to stay on the reservation, their hostility comes to the fore.”

The pro-life lobby is particularly concerned that, despite her faith, Miers may favour retaining Roe v Wade, the law allowing abortion virtually on demand. Conservatives are also eyeing Miers’s sympathy for affirmative action, which she shares with her friend and frequent dinner companion Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state.

The American right has been waiting for decades to tilt the balance of the Supreme Court on these issues, only to find that Bush may have squandered the opportunity for a generation.

In contrast to some Democrats who have welcomed Miers’s nomination — further inflaming the right — Clinton has yet to express an opinion on Bush’s choice, saying she will closely follow the confirmation hearings.

She can hardly be more opposed to Miers than the pundit Ann Coulter, who concluded last week: “If the top female lawyer (in America) is Harriet Miers, we may as well stop allowing girls to go to law school.”

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