In a week full of significant events in Washington, D.C., little rankled conservatives more than two of the rulings of the Supreme Court. The liberals on the court found that racial discrimination is a good thing when it promotes diversity and that consensual adult sex - specifically homosexuality - is a constitutionally protected right.
So is there a silver lining in all of this?
Yes.
Think about this. Of the nine sitting justices, seven were appointed by Republican presidents - Stevens, Souter, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Thomas, Scalia, and Kennedy. Only four of these justices held the conservative view and dissented in the affirmative action case, Grutter v. Bollinger (Rehnquist, Thomas, Scalia, and Kennedy) while only three dissented in the sodomy case, Lawrence v. Texas (Rehnquist, Thomas, and Scalia).
Could Stevens, Souter, and O'Connor (and Kennedy in his Lawrence opinion) have made a better case for conservatives to pressure a Republican White House to be VERY SELECTIVE in whom it nominates for any possible SCOTUS vacancies? If these cases have not galvanized conservatives in the fight for non-activist judicial nominees, nothing will.
A concern of many people on the right is the rumor that White House Counsel Al Gonzales could be a nominee for a Supreme Court seat. The worry is that Gonzales would be a judicial activist in favor of affirmative action, abortion, and other liberal ideas. The hope is that President Bush will see the actions of wishy-washy Republican-appointed justices and realize the mistake he would be making in putting Gonzales on the high court.
Conservatives hope that Bush will stick to his guns and nominate someone in the mold of Scalia or Thomas, as he indicated in his campaign for the White House.
Background:
