SCOTUS - Again, with the warnings!

Now, it's the conservatives issuing warnings to President Bush.

The Times reports that conservative movement leaders convened in five conference calls (!) yesterday with one purpose: uniting in opposition to Alberto Gonzales as a nominee to the Supreme Court. Apparently, they are not convinced that his sole purpose in life is to strike down Roe v. Wade.

Late last week, a delegation of conservative lawyers led by C. Boyden Gray and former Attorney General Edwin Meese III met with the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to warn that appointing Mr. Gonzales would splinter conservative support.

And Paul M. Weyrich, a veteran conservative organizer and chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, said he had told administration officials that nominating Mr. Gonzales, whose views on abortion are considered suspect by religious conservatives, would fracture the president's conservative backers.

So, there it is.

The religious right wants a justice who will come to the court predisposed to overturn Roe v. Wade. Period.

However, it isn't as though the Supreme Court has the power to issue such decrees unprompted. The high court rules on cases that come before it. Conservatives, law & order conservatives, are saying they couldn't care less about the merits of any such case. They are demanding a Supreme Court justice whose decisions, at least on this issue, will be guided by ideology & religious faith, not by the law.

This could be a strategic mistake. Issuing such a public warning to the president displays a boldness verging on disrespect. By doing so, they may have motivated Bush to do the exact opposite of what they want.

President Bush strikes me as a man who spends a lot of time thinking about his legacy. He sees himself as a visionary, a transformational leader. I doubt very much that he wants to be remembered as a lap dog of this narrow political constituency. He has worked to position himself as the shepherd the Christian conservative flock, not as their puppet.

Frankly, Bush has never displayed any obvious convictions about abortion or gay rights, the two bugaboos of Christian conservatives. The man has been President of the United States for four-and-a-half-years. What has he done on either? He extended the global gag order to keep abortion from being discussed at family planning clinics that receive U.S. funding. Not exactly the same as riding across the land with a flaming sword to smite the homos and the baby-killers. Just this week, the leader of the Family Research Council sent an e-mail to supporters complaining about Bush's silence on gay marriage.

Christian conservatives have begun to suspect that they have been had; that, for all of his campaign rhetoric, George W. Bush is not one of them. This realization is the likely source of the frustration that leads them to warn the president, in the pages of the New York Times, that he had better do their bidding, or else. That's a bold shot to take, and if it doesn't work, you really have nothing left.

If Bush caves in, he will become a joke. I suspect he knows that.