Bush's Supreme Challenge

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The judge's defenders argue that he has had a strong hand in many issues that have pleased the Republican base: the order setting up military tribunals to try suspected terrorists, the fight with Congress over releasing information about Dick Cheney's energy task force and ending the American Bar Association's role in rating potential judicial nominees. More important, they point out, he's not a legal activist but a strict constructionist--one of the sacred judicial tenets of conservatives. "He was ruling on the existing statute, not legislating," a conservative Washington lawyer says of the Texas abortion ruling. "We've complained about legislating from the bench for years. We can't now start doing it ourselves." On affirmative action, top White House aides say Gonzales was not pushing his own views but finding the legal rationale for what the President believes, which is that race should be a factor in hiring but not the deciding one. It's a rule Bush believes he applied to Gonzales back in 1995 for the first of four jobs that Bush has given him. "Of course it mattered what his ethnicity is," said Bush when he appointed Gonzales to the Texas Supreme Court, "but first and foremost, what mattered is, I've got great confidence in Al. I know him well. He's a good friend."

Gonzales' resume isn't going to provide much fodder for conservatives--or liberals, for that matter--looking to deep-six Bush's close ally. He was a pro-business jurist in Texas for two years but no ideologue on social issues. He spent 13 years at Enron's law firm, Vinson & Elkins, doing deals in the go-go Houston of the 1980s but before the controversial Enron transactions took place. He was generally known as a stick-to-the-law kind of attorney in Bush's office. "Very seldom, if ever, did I hear his personal views on issues," said Terral Smith, who worked with Gonzales in Austin. "He was very careful in staff meetings to stay within the law."

Why should conservative dissent worry a President who is so wildly popular with members of his party? If the President isn't good enough for them, what are they going to do--sign on with Howard Dean? The answer is simple--and plenty scary for the White House. "We'll stay home," says Schlafly.

That is not an idle threat. Since arriving in Washington, political adviser Karl Rove has pointed out that 4 million Evangelicals who voted for Republicans in the G.O.P. congressional rout of 1994 stayed home in 2000, contributing to the closest election in modern history. Bush's displays of faith have brought many of those voters back into the fold, but they are still alert for an apostasy. Rove also wants to attract Hispanic voters. In the case of a Gonzales nomination, his two aims could clash.