Why The Right Hates Gonzales

Interesting article in this morning's WashPost by Lois Romano about George W. Bush's record of judicial appointments while he was governor of Texas: "My impression was that he kept the hard-line Christian right at bay back then," Richard Murray, a political science professor at the University of Houston, is quoted. "He relied heavily on an organization that could get good people identified first and foremost. There wasn't much of an ideological test."

He appointed his best bud Alberto Gonzales to the Texas Supreme Court and later brought Gonzales along with him to the White House as Chief Counsel and then appointed him Attorney General after Ashcroft. For all the career advancement, Gonzales did what an amiable lightweight is expected to do: he obliged the president's men by writing a memo saying torture in the defense of freedom is no vice. But we digress.

What's gotten the Right baying against Gonzales right now as a replacement appointment for O'Connor on the Supremes is a decision he participated in on the Texas Supreme Court in 2000, while George W. was still governor. (We wrote about this decision back when Priscilla Owen was up for confirmation as an Appeals Court appointment. Both Gonzales and Owen served on the Texas Supreme Court together and took opposite positions. Gonzales attacked Owen at the time as a conservative "judicial activist.")

The Texas decision involved the right of a 17-year-old girl to have an abortion without parental consent. Gonzales was in the majority for allowing it. Owen bitterly opposed it. Gonzales referred to Owen in his written decision as something of a loose judicial cannon ... that is, "an activist" willing to exert her personal feelings in place of the law. Which makes Owen precisely the kind of activist the Right wants.

The point of the WashPost article is that back in those days El Presidente was more interested in finding good judges than he was in right-wing ideology: "Not once was I asked my position on any hot-button or social issues," said one woman interviewed for a high-level judgeship, who asked that her name not be used so she could speak freely in a politically volatile time. "He wanted to make sure I understood my job to be interpreting the law -- not making law. It was clear he didn't want activist judges."

I've put money down on a bet that Bush will name Gonzales to O'Connor's seat. That's precisely why he's been so unusually defensive about his friend. In other words, could get interesting.