IN ANY other circumstances, President Bush would surely welcome the release of correspondence from the Texas state archive praising him as “cool” and “the greatest!”.

The gushing letters — proclaiming that “Texas is blessed” and “All I hear is how great you and Laura are doing” — serve as a reminder of happier times before the Bush presidency hit its present rocky patch.

But the bundles of yellowing documents have only added to the President’s woes. They were written by Harriet Miers, Mr Bush’s former personal lawyer and his controversial nomination for a rare vacant seat on the Supreme Court.

With Mr Bush battling charges of cronyism for naming a non-judge as “the best candidate”, he could have done without a reminder of how fawning his close confidante had been over the years.

In one sugary letter to the then governor released under open government laws, Ms Miers declared: “Keep up all the great work. The state is in great hands. Thanks also for yours and your family’s personal sacrifice.”

Again, after seeing Mr Bush sign an autograph for a little girl, Ms Miers was moved to write: “I was struck by the tremendous impact you have on the children whose lives you touch.”

Mr Bush is facing a firestorm from his traditional conservative base for nominating the 60-year-old fellow Texan, who made her name back in the Lone Star State, but has done little to impress the legal establishment and still less to appeal to the Republican right. They want someone with a clear anti-abortion record in the hope that the Supreme Court will move to the right and eventually overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade case setting out the legal right for abortion.

Instead they have been left with ambiguous signals. Ms Miers bought a $150 ticket to a Texas anti-abortion group’s fundraising dinner in 1989, but also donated $1,000 to Al Gore’s unsuccessful 1988 Democratic presidential campaign.

It means that Mr Bush’s nominee faces a torrid public grilling on her views at confirmation hearings and a potential rejection by the Republicancontrolled Senate.

The fact that the Texas papers were cleared for release by Mr Bush’s Republican successor as governor indicates just how deep conservative opposition runs to Ms Miers, who made her name in the state by becoming the first female head of the bar association.

Right-wing hostility only deepened yesterday after an attempt by Laura Bush to silence the critics backfired. Mrs Bush has acknowledged pushing for Ms Miers behind the scenes and allied herself with a host of women’s groups when she accused critics of the nomination of sexism.

William Kristol, godfather of the Washington neocons, accused the White House of resorting to a desperate strategy with claims that were “obviously ridiculous”.

Jonah Goldberg, who runs the prominent conservative National Review blog, added: “It is horribly disappointing and the sort of thing I normally expect from left-wingers.”

Most senior Democrats have remained agnostic or even supportive of Ms Miers, another troubling sign for Republicans and suggesting that they will pass up the chance to give Mr Bush a bloody nose if her candidacy makes it as far as a Senate vote next month.

If ratified, Ms Miers would replace the retiring Sandra Day O’Connor, a swing voter on the nine-strong court, which often divides five-four on some of the most contentious social issues facing the US.

The 60-year-old unmarried evangelical Christian is not a judge and has published no significant legal papers indicating her stance. But she has been defended by Nathan Hecht, the most conservative judge in Texas, with whom she had an on-off relationship for many years.

He has sought to bolster her image by recalling how he trained her to shoot tin cans on a dirt road with a revolver. He told The Washington Post that Ms Miers had told him: “I am convinced that life begins at conception.”

It has done little to stop the attacks. Ann Coulter, the right-wing commentator, said:

“Harriet Miers isn’t qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on The West Wing, let alone to be a real one.”

It became clear yesterday that Ms Miers will face a mauling at Senate judiciary committee confirmation hearings.Arlen Specter, the committee chairman, said her critics failed to grasp “a very basic constitutional principle of judicial independence” in demanding to know her stance on abortion.

But the most prominent social conservative on the committee, Sam Brownback, has indicated that if Ms Miers showed any sign of believing Roe v Wade was not challengeable, he would vote against her.

After meeting her, he is said to have added: “The hearings will eat her up.”

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