Morning copy 10.06.2005

Will President Bush use the first veto of his administration to undo a bipartisan 90-9 vote against torture? Washington Post:

Forty-six Republicans joined 43 Democrats and one independent in voting to define and limit interrogation techniques that U.S. troops may use against terrorism suspects, the latest sign that alarm over treatment of prisoners in the Middle East and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is widespread in both parties. The White House had fought to prevent the restrictions, with Vice President Cheney visiting key Republicans in July and a spokesman yesterday repeating President Bush's threat to veto the larger bill that the language is now attached to -- a $440 billion military spending measure.

Much more to read in this one:

The Senate's 90 to 9 vote suggested a new boldness among Republicans to challenge the White House on war policy.

At 10:10 Eastern today, the president will deliver a speech on the war in Iraq and the fight against terrorism.

Harriet Miers

Meetings between activists v. presidential envoys prove to be contentious, Washington Post:

The tenor of the two meetings suggested that Bush has yet to rally his own party behind Miers and underscores that he risks the biggest rupture with the Republican base of his presidency. While conservatives at times have assailed some Bush policy decisions, rarely have they been so openly distrustful of the president himself.

Similar account in the New York Times:

The administration sent Ed Gillespie, the former Republican Party chairman helping to shepherd Ms. Miers through Senate hearings, to shore up support at a weekly meeting of conservative organizers convened Wednesday by the strategist Grover Norquist. There, Mr. Gillespie was pelted by criticism that the president had failed to pick a committed conservative or a legal star.

"There was pretty much unanimity," said one conservative who spoke anonymously because confidentiality was a condition of the meeting. "Morale is low right now at the base."

The longest newspaper article that I have seen to date on Miers is in today's Los Angeles Times:

"She took the pill. She said: 'I'm yours,' " said a longtime GOP strategist in Texas who has worked with Bush and Miers, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"She put her personal life, everything, on hold."

That loyalty and commitment, demonstrated repeatedly in Texas and after Miers followed Bush to the White House in 2001, led the president to reassure skeptical conservatives with the simple statement: "I know her heart."

John Dickerson in Slate:

In this battle, the White House has clearly sided with the churchgoing masses against the Republican Party's own whiny Beltway intellectuals. The Bushies have always mistrusted their own bow-tied secularists, but the rift has never before been so public. "This is classic elitism," says a senior administration official of the GOP opposition to the Miers nomination.