News - Christian Coalition of Georgia

What becomes of the brokenhearted?

By DAVID REINHARD
The Oregonian - Thursday, July 14, 2005

They're torn between their trust in George Bush and their doubts about Alberto Gonzales. They've long taken comfort in the president's certainties -- his support of judicial restraint, his pledge to select originalists for the high courts such as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, his opposition to abortion. And they now fear the attorney general's ambiguities -- his murky jurisprudence, his watering down of the administration's opposition to racial preferences as White House counsel and his abortion rulings as a Texas Supreme Court justice.

They don't want to cause Bush trouble on the eve of a Supreme Court confirmation fight with Democrats, but they want a nominee worth fighting for, and Gonzales does not qualify. And so they worry and hope.

It's hard to say what Gonzales' appointment would mean for the Supreme Court, which is part of the problem. He lacks a clear, defined judicial philosophy. But it's easy to tell what the political impact would be: vast demoralization among Bush's fiercest supporters. If a Gonzales pick doesn't trigger widespread anger and opposition on the part of former Bush loyalists, it will, at least, leave his base crestfallen for the battle the left will surely wage against Gonzales. ("Terror memos," anyone?)

True, the Senate would likely approve his nomination -- or any other Bush pick, for that matter. Conservatives aren't going to defeat Gonzales, and many would probably come to his defense on the theory that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But the pick would have political repercussions beyond his confirmation. Conservatives would be depressed going into the 2006 elections, where turning out the base will be key. Also, between now and 2008, some GOP presidential candidates will make hay of Bush's "betrayal." Lame duckery is hard enough, why create more John McCains?

Bush cracked the Catholic vote last year -- against a Catholic, no less. While Al Gore carried Catholics in 2000, Bush won 52 percent of Catholics in 2004. Among Catholics who attend church weekly, his take was even higher (55 percent) against John Kerry. Will Republicans lock in these gains if Bush nominates Gonzales and fails to seize the chance to reshape the high court?

There are reasons to wonder. In a QEV Analytics poll last summer, 54 percent of Catholics said they think "liberal federal judges" threaten traditional American values. Sixty-five percent of religiously active Catholics -- those attending Mass once or more a week -- held this view. As QEV noted, "[B]ush enjoys a substantial advantage over . . . Kerry on the question of who will appoint judges consistent with respondents' values."

Would Catholic bishops who have supported Bush on the non-negotiable "culture of life" issues (abortion, euthanasia) have continued credibility if he chooses a Latino David Souter? Neutralize these issues with a bad pick and the church's up-to-now muted criticism on issues such as the death penalty and the war in Iraq could increase. Anyone who thinks there won't be disillusion hasn't read the letter to Bush from Spokane Bishop William Skylstad, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. ("[I] urge you to consider . . . qualified jurists who, pre-eminently, support the protection of human life from conception to natural death, especially of those who are unborn, disabled, or terminally ill.")

Would appointing the first Latino justice offset the losses? Only if you're sure Latinos will respond as an ethnic bloc. Catholics certainly didn't form a bloc in rejecting "one of their own." Issues trumped identity. Bush won more of the Latino vote in 2004 (44 percent compared with 35 percent in 2000 -- but not because he spoke better Spanish than Kerry). "Republicans went to church," Carolyn Curiel explained in The New York Times, noting that Latinos are one of the nation's most religious minority groups. "The GOP values campaign boiled down to being against gay marriage and abortion rights," she wrote. "In Spanish language ads, that was articulated as supporting marriage between a man and a woman, and motherhood (through the law that says a fetus could be a murder victim)."

This New York Times editorial writer and ex-Clinton speechwriter isn't happy about any of this. But it does suggest that Bush's Latino supporters may not be happy with a Supreme Court pick whose judicial philosophy doesn't preclude using the bench to advance gay marriage, abortion and other policy preferences.

Even if his name happens to be Alberto Gonzales.

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