And as for the majority being for the ESAS, while that is debatable as noted here

http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/009073.html#009073

You said earlier a majority at NASA.
I would say ESAS purpose is to satisfy the majority at NASA.
If I were to choose on strictly personal preference between ESAS and Directlauncher, my tendency would be to pick neither [but generally favor ESAS over Directlauncher].
My general principle is that NASA should not be in the launch business, but rather it should be focused on exploration- with eye towards potential exploitation of Space resources by the private sector.

The REALITY is that NASA is involved in the business of picking who to subsidy in launch business, and in this reality it is mostly a non choice between Lockheed and Boeing. BUT more importantly, NASA is mostly about being a jobs program.

NASA's job program has a lot of people doing something related to the Shuttle and ISS. And if you realize that NASA is job program, mostly; a realist would look at how best to manage this job program. I'm a realist who doesn't want NASA's job program to continues it's long general trend of destroying our ability to open the space frontier. [And I don't favor massive decreases or increase in this job program, and prefer smooth transitions in regard to it's workforce]. And at this precise moment the trend of NASA destroying the private sector, is less than it has over it's history- and THAT is more important than anything else NASA is doing or not doing.

And I don't want NASA to pick, say SpaceX, as it's winner, but if SpaceX can provide a service to NASA in terms launching something, I want NASA to be a potential customer that will make choices that could/should save tax payer money.
And as general rule, NASA should encourage more competition.
And if NASA was really brilliance, it would encourage more volume in regard to rocket launches per year and lower cost per launch.