SCOTUS - The pressure is on

The religious right begins its grass-roots campaign to pressure President Bush to appoint a Supreme Court nominee who will do the bidding of Christian conservatives.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins sent the following message to the FRC's newsletter subscribers.

Encourage President Bush to name a CONSERVATIVE Justice

July 5, 2005

The retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor from the U.S. Supreme Court presents the most important opportunity we may have for decades to stop the nation's courts from stripping away our Judeo-Christian heritage (emphasis added). Justice O'Connor MUST be replaced by a conservative justice who will honor the constitution and not make laws from the bench. President Bush made a campaign promise to name justices to the nation's highest court that mirror the judicial philosophy of Supreme Court conservative Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. That promise, more than perhaps any other, charged me and millions of other values voters across the land to vote for Mr. Bush.

Justice O'Connor was the deciding vote on many 5-4 decisions of the Court that strike at the heart of our Judeo-Christian heritage. You know that just a week ago, Justice O'Conner and four others on the Supreme Court ruled that the Ten Commandments cannot be displayed on public property if there is a religious purpose in doing so. Honoring God in the public square is now banned because of Justice O'Connor's vote. She was part of the 5-4 majority striking down sodomy laws two years ago potentially paving the way for same-sex marriage. And she also sided with the five-member majority striking down the Congressional law prohibiting the gruesome practice of partial- birth-abortion. You can see why Family Research Council is pouring everything into the fight for her replacement -- for someone who is a conservative and a constitutional strict constructionist.

The President needs to know that you will stand with him in what will no doubt be one of the biggest political battles this city has ever seen if he keeps his promise and nominates a candidate like Justice Scalia or Thomas. The President needs to hear from you and your friends and neighbors right now before he makes his decision.

There is something desperate in the way Mr. Perkins reminds his constituents of the debt the president owes them for his reelection. They are clearly frustrated over Bush's failure so far to enact their agenda with the vengeance he led them to believe they could expect.

This direct pressure from the "values voters" of the 2004 election will not only be felt by the White House, however. In fact, it might be felt least of all by the White House. After all, George W. Bush will never run for office again. Members of congress are another matter, and they are wholly dependent on the good graces of the Christian conservative voting bloc. They are the ones, along with RNC, who will begin applying the real pressure on the president and his aides. Under the laws of physics, sludge rolls downhill. In today's political climate, it will be the other way around.