Frankenstein of The Culture War

Now the right wingers and theocrats are out of control:

The White House and the Senate Republican leadership are pushing back against pressure from some of their conservative allies about the coming Supreme Court nomination, urging them to stop attacking Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales as a potential nominee and to tone down their talk of a culture war.In a series of conference calls on Tuesday and over the last several days, Republican Senate aides encouraged conservative groups to avoid emphasizing the searing cultural issues that social conservatives see at the heart of the court fight, subjects like abortion, public support for religion and same-sex marriage, participants said.

The theocrats want their payback and they aren’t going to be quiet. They are not going to be duped or sold out:

Gary Bauer, president of American Values and a Christian conservative candidate for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, said, “A lot of people feel that the administration shouldn’t be reluctant to talk about the values we hope the nominee will embrace.”

“If all my side does is talk about process – ‘we want a fair hearing, etc.’ – while Ted Kennedy is talking about ‘we are not going to let somebody on the court who is going to take away the rights of individuals,’ as silly as I think that is, it will affect the way people think about the battle,” Mr. Bauer said.

Note that Mr. Bauer thinks its “silly” that Ted Kennedy wants a justice who will not take away the rights of individuals.

Tom Minnery, director of public policy for Focus on the Family, an evangelical group and broadcaster based in Colorado Springs, blamed leftist advocates for the “decibel level” of judicial confirmation debates and said his group planned to continue to address mainly social and cultural issues “to get our constituents to understand how important this battle is.”

Officials of several Christian conservative groups, who did not want to be identified because of what they said was pressure by the White House, said they were continuing to urge the president not to nominate Mr. Gonzales.

Tuesday evening, Focus on the Family transmitted an e-mail message to supporters with the title, “Bush Defends Gonzales. Some conservatives wonder if attorney general is right for Supreme Court.”

Intra-GOP fighting could be fun to watch. And, the right wingers are not going to back down. They want to overturn Roe v. Wade, they want discrimination against gays, they want to end access to contraception, they want to destroy privacy rights….and they aren’t going to stop until they get all of these. To them, that’s what the Supreme Court battle is about. But don’t forget, this is the group that’s always talking being critical of “activist judges.”