Supreme Court scorcher
HIS FATHER might call it ''tension city." George W. Bush is under intense pressure from conservatives who returned him to the White House.
''It's Armageddon," proclaimed Boston radio talk show host Jay Severin about President Bush's pending Supreme Court nominee. Severin, the host of ''Extreme Games" (96.9-WTTK), went on to deride Senator Kennedy as ''a fat piece of lying garbage" for suggesting in an opinion piece published in The
Multiply and amplify this type of rhetoric across the country. It explains why the White House and the Senate Republican leadership are asking conservatives to tone down the hot talk. The right prefers it when the left sounds like rude, raving extremists.
It is Armageddon on the left as well. ''If the president abuses his power and nominates someone who threatens to roll back the rights and freedoms of the American people, then the American people will insist that we oppose that nominee, and we intend to do so," Kennedy said on the Senate floor.
Both liberal and conservative groups are gearing up for an ugly battle that will cost at least as much as a presidential campaign. Almost all the money will be raised and spent by independent advocacy groups, most of which are not required under federal tax law to reveal its source.
With lifetime tenure on the federal bench, the judiciary is supposed to be insulated from politics. Yet the millions that will be poured into this effort make a mockery of that principle. The reality is that Bush will feel searing political heat -- and it will be especially hard to escape the fire that is burning on the right. He stoked it, after all. Immediately after O'Connor's announcement, conservatives reminded him of his campaign promise to appoint judges in the conservative mold of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Bush the presidential candidate courted social conservatives, indulged them, and played to them during the past election, whether the issue was abortion or same-sex marriage. Today, the voters who made the difference in the showdown with John Kerry don't care about a moderate's definition of a presidential legacy. They want complete political victory, a Supreme Court justice who mirrors their beliefs, especially when it comes to opposing and restricting abortion.
Bush's longtime friend, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, does not satisfy this constituency. The president is speaking up personally for Gonzales, who is under attack from conservatives because of two abortion rights decisions he took part in as a judge on the Texas Supreme Court. In one decision, Gonzales allowed a 17-year-old to have an abortion without notifying her parents. In the second case, he held that a teenage girl had not shown that she had ''thoughtfully considered the alternatives" to abortion and sent her back to the trial court for another chance.
Bush told USA Today: ''I'm the kind of person, when a friend gets attacked, I don't like it." Yesterday, while traveling in Europe, Bush again defended Gonzales, who followed him to Washington from Texas. Bush said he does not have a ''litmus test" for his nominee: ''I'll pick people who, one, can do the job; people who are honest, people who are bright, and people who will strictly interpret the Constitution and not use the bench to legislate from."
Mostly due to those two abortion rights cases, Gonzales is emerging as a possible consensus candidate. But conservatives despise Gonzales. In just one example, an online article in the conservative American Spectator said that picking Gonzales ''would reek of unprincipled cronyism."
Gonzales could be at odds with Bush's own stance regarding parental notification. This is important, since the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case from New Hampshire involving parental notification. This past April, Bush urged the Senate to take up a bill passed by the House that upholds state laws requiring parental notification or consent and makes it a crime, complete with possible fines and jail sentences, for doctors or other adults to help patients under 18 evade parental notification requirements by crossing state lines for an abortion.
In the days since O'Connor announced her resignation, the choice before Bush has been framed by the right and the left in terms of his presidential legacy. But this Supreme Court nomination is an even more complicated case of divided loyalties. With Gonzales in the mix, Bush is also caught between his conservative base and his friend.
Joan Vennochi's e-mail address is vennochi@globe.com. 
