Conservatives are told it will not be Gonzales
By Alexander Bolton - "The Hill"
White House officials have assured select conservative leaders that they will not nominate Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, according to a conservative familiar with the behind-the-scenes discussions.
The message has filtered out to conservative activists that Gonzales, whom many activists believe would be too liberal on abortion and racial preference issues, is no longer a threat to their cause. That could portend a fierce battle in the Senate in September, as Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) has said Gonzales would be a qualified nominee, suggesting that his selection could have achieved bipartisan consensus.
Senior administration officials have told select conservative leaders that President Bush is likely to nominate either Edith Jones or Edith Clement, members of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the conservative source said.
It is also possible that would nominate Michigan Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan or former Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, whom the Senate recently confirmed to the 5th Circuit.
Jones and Clement have been mentioned as possible nominees in recent news articles, along with federal appeals-court Judges Michael Luttig, John Roberts Jr. and Michael McConnell and Harvie Wilkinson. But the chances of the four men have slimmed significantly since Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s said late last week that he would not retire soon. It is viewed as politically difficult to replace O’Connor with a conservative white man.
Other conservatives corroborated the account that Gonzales’s nomination is now “off the table” in the wake of vigorous conservative protests in response to rumors that Bush was leaning toward appointing his longtime friend. Gonzales served as a Texas Supreme Court justice and White House counsel before being named attorney general. Just this month, Bush assailed conservative critics of Gonzales, saying; “I don’t like it when a friend gets criticized. I’m loyal to my friends.”
But the activists’ criticism clearly has had an effect.
“There’s a consensus that the White House has quietly signaled ‘message received’ on Gonzales,” a second conservative strategist said.
Manuel Miranda, who formerly handled strategy on judicial nominations for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and now chairs a coalition of conservative groups called the Third Branch Conference, said that last week he hosted two conference calls with conservative activists to mobilize in opposition to Gonzales.
But by the time of a conference call yesterday in which nearly 70 activists representing various groups participated, fear over Gonzales had subsided.
“There is a wide sense that it was not going to be Gonzales and not [to be] worried about that,” he said.
Several conservative activists have suggested Judge Emilio Garza of the 5th Circuit and Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero, an appointee of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), as acceptable Hispanic alternative candidates.
But many conservatives are interpreting first lady Laura Bush’s statement on NBC’s “Today” show, stating that she hopes her husband will choose a woman, as a sign that he will do so.
Conservative activists now say it would be better to nominate a conservative woman to the court, as the battle to replace O’Connor will revolve around the issue of abortion. Several key conservatives say it will be more difficult for liberal groups to argue that Bush’s pick is an attempt to curtail women’s rights if the nominee is a woman. Future court decisions to restrict abortion rights may be more politically palatable if a female justice agrees with the majority, avoiding a future in which the court’s only woman, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, would consistently dissent on rulings restricting abortion.
“It would be much better for us if we’re fighting over a solid conservative woman,” Miranda said. “The harshest attack will come from NOW [the National Organization for Women] and NARAL [Pro-Choice America].
“It would be disarming and very beneficial” to have a female nominee.
Jones is considered a solid originalist, while the orientation of Clement is less well-known.
“Edith Jones has the sharper definition as a conservative, tagged as pro-life in her perspective, and she is bound to draw the heaviest fire,” Hadley Arkes, a conservative legal scholar and professor of jurisprudence at Amherst College, wrote last week for National Review Online. “Clement, in contrast, would be a harder target: her own specialty was in maritime law; she has not dealt, in her opinions with the hot-button issues of abortion and gay rights.”
Conservative leaders had been told at the beginning of the month to clear their schedules for next week in anticipation that Bush would announce his pick then. But news reports after Rehnquist’s announcement indicate that Bush will unveil his selection this week.
One prominent conservative said he believes the White House may be moving the timetable up a week to shift media attention away from Karl Rove, who is currently embroiled in a controversy over the outing of CIA operative Valerie Wilson, also known as Valerie Plame.
“I advised them not to make the announcement until the end of summer otherwise if the person is a conservative he or she is going to be hit at by all these left wing groups for the whole month [of August],” said Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation. “I have pleaded. There’s a lot of pressure to name him in order to get the Rove story and other things off the front page.”
Weyrich said he has received subtle indications from the White House that Gonzales will not be nominated: “One of their people said something [about] how well the president thinks Gonzales is doing as attorney general. You could take that as an indication.” |
