The Conservative Machine's Unexpected Turn

"If there is a third-party fight out there, you want your people fighting, no doubt about that," said a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing internal policy. But "the most important people to learn who she is obviously are the senators who will vote on her."

If the White House succeeds in pushing Miers through the Senate without the help of its allied groups, their influence may be reduced. At the same time, though, the White House could be left with a festering problem within its own party.

The broader nature of the split becomes clearer with each conservative declaration of independence from the Bush White House. David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, wrote yesterday that many of his friends "swallowed policies" they opposed out of loyalty to Bush.

"We've been there for him because we've considered ourselves part of his team," Keene wrote in an essay printed in the newspaper the Hill and e-mailed to fellow conservatives. "No more. From now on, this administration will find it difficult to muster support on the right without explaining why it should be forthcoming. The days of the blank check have ended."

Not all conservative groups have abandoned Bush. Progress for America, a group with close ties to Rove, unveiled a $10,000 Internet ad yesterday and has a Web site devoted to Miers. But it has not devoted as much money yet to her confirmation as it did to Roberts's. Immediately after his nomination in July, Progress for America launched a $1 million television buy supporting him. The group spent just $300,000 for ads in the days before and after Miers's nomination, with about half of those spots congratulating Roberts on his confirmation without mentioning Miers.

The group's spokeswoman, Jessica Boulanger, said that, overall, Progress for America has spent $500,000 supporting Miers in the two weeks since her nomination; it spent something less than $9 million over the 10-week Roberts campaign. "We plan to have a similar effort on behalf of the Miers nomination," Boulanger said.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice and a key conservative adviser to the White House, said the outside campaign has started slowly but will grow much more intense when the Senate opens hearings. "A lot of the religious conservative groups have lined up pretty well," he said. "Some of the other conservative groups have been a little late to this one."

Late or perhaps not coming at all. Some conservatives have even begun raising money or circulating petitions in outright opposition to Miers. As Manuel A. Miranda, former nominations counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), put it in an e-mail to colleagues, "Two weeks later, the nomination's friends have been its worst enemies."