Another sign that the Miers nomination is in trouble

When the National Review reports that the Miers nomination is pretty much in the tank, you know things are bad. Byron York, White House correspondent for the National Review, posted yesterday an article entitled "The Miers Support Team: Gloomy and Demoralized." The subtitle is even more telling: "Now they’re discussing stopping her visits to the Senate."

Ouch.

And the article, which quotes three unnamed sources within the White House, only gets increasingly painful. Here are my favorite excerpts:

Strategists working with the White House in support of the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers are becoming increasingly demoralized and pessimistic about the nomination's prospects on Capitol Hill in the wake of Miers's meetings with several Republican and Democratic senators.

*******

"It's been a gradual descent into almost silence," says a second source of the calls. "The meetings with the senators are going terribly. On a scale of one to 100, they are in negative territory. The thought now is that they have to end....Obviously the smart thing to do would be to withdraw the nomination and have a do-over as soon as possible. But the White House is so irrational that who knows? As of this morning, there is a sort of pig-headed resolve to press forward, cancel the meetings with senators if necessary, and bone up for the hearings."

*******

In summary, says the first source, "People have been looking for ways to support this. There are a lot of us who would like to find a reason to be encouraged. Every time I try to accommodate myself to this nomination, folks at the White House say idiotic things that piss me off, like that spin on Rove's part about her supposed deep involvement in judicial selection for three years, which is just not accurate."

(emphasis added). As Kevin Drum put it, "Goodness. A 'pig-headed resolve to press forward'? From George Bush? Who would have guessed?"