Will Republican moderates find some backbone over the Bolton nomination?

Don't hold your breath.  But miracles occasionally do happen.

The White House is currently in a standoff with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  It's refusing to turn over to the Congress material from the National Security Agency (NSA) that John Bolton received, quite possibly for no other purposes than organizational politicking.

Steve Clemons of Washington Note writes (Dick Cheney's Incredible, Imperial, Infallible Vice Presidency: White House Defies Biden and Lugar on Bolton Intercepts  05/07/05):

All bets are off now on Bolton. I think that a real battle could ensue over this now -- with those protesting Bolton and the political tactics driving his nomination as the ones on moral high ground. To win, the White House has to brutally crush opposition among Republican ranks. To do that costs vast amounts of political capital -- and ends up sending someone to the U.N. who will be "damaged goods" after this battle.

All this depends on whether the so-called "moderate" Republicans like Committee Chairman Richard Lugar are willing to stand up for what's good for the country and for the Congress' Constitutional prerogatives.

Clemons writes that he:

... thinks it is fascinating that John Bolton, an Under Secretary -- not a Deputy Secretary or Secretary -- could access with little resistance the nation's most secret secrets, possibly to spy on colleagues, or waging a foreign and national security effort at odds with Powell's policies, or even engaged in vendettas or personal vanity issues -- and yet Senators with Constitutional responsibilities in this matter cannot see the same material he did.

Stay tuned.  There's always a possibility that some "moderate" Republican Senator will put devotion to the Constitution above loyaly to the increasingly authoritarian Republican Party.  I wouldn't recommend betting money on it.  But, as I said, miracles are possible.