Faith, Hope, and Judge Roberts

For years before Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement from the Supreme Court, conservatives' rallying cry has been "No more Souters." Still smarting from the first president Bush's 1990 selection of David Souter, then an unknown New Hampshire jurist, to sit on the Supreme Court, they vowed that they would never again merely trust the word of a president and his men on a nominee's conservative bona fides.

Justice Souter, after all, went on to side with the liberal justices in upholding Roe v. Wade, which established the constitutional right to abortion. In so doing, he became the poster boy for bad Republican judicial selection. Never again would social conservatives accept a candidate without a paper trail of rulings and arguments that spelled out his positions on the issues that matter most to them. The stakes were simply too high. This was conservative orthodoxy.

Now there is John Roberts. Despite occasional press reports about some uncovered document that purports to show that Roberts really is a conservative, his paper trail, like Souter's, is virtually non-existent.

Just like a decade ago, a President Bush and his men are saying, "trust me." And once again, religious conservatives are saying, "OK, we will." Tony Perkins, head of the influential Family Research Council, enthused that Roberts was a great choice, an "intellectually powerful man of character and integrity."

To be sure, there are signs that Roberts is the conservative he is promised to be. He argued for overturning Roe while in the Bush Justice Department. His wife has been active in Feminists for Life, a pro-life group, for years. White House insiders who have known him are confidently promising that he is "one of us." President Bush's admiration for him is evident.

But there are a lot of alarm bells as well. His Justice Department work didn't represent his views, they were simply the views of his client, the President of the United States. In fact, he has publicly stated that Roe is the "settled" law of the land. Conservatives were apoplectic a few weeks ago when Judge Edith Clement's name was floated as the rumored Supreme Court nominee, because she had stated the same thing during a confirmation hearing.

Looking at this nomination and the way that things are shaping up, it is hard to escape the feeling that the "no more Souters" vow has faded. John Roberts public record doesn't demonstrate him to be the kind of candidate conservatives have advocated for the past decade. He may well prove to be the anti-Souter; he may be a true stealth conservative. But the fact of the matter is that what we don't know about him outweighs what we do know.

Given these reservations and conservative vows to never again support a stealth nominee, why are most conservatives veritably drooling about Roberts?

Three small reasons and one big one.

Why Roberts owns a hanging chad
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