Prof. Bainbridge is joining the right's call for Bush to keep his campaign promises and nominate a judge in the mold of Thomas or Scalia (who, it should be said, were radically different molds when they were first nominated). He's joined, today, by the Wall Street Journal, who I won't link to out of a generalized distaste for subscription walls. So expect that to be the next move. In the runup to Roberts, the quieter, more influential papers were talking about the pressure business was exerting to get an ally on the Court. At that moment, with privatization flagging and Schiavo having turned off more than a few folks, Bush decided to give the corporate world what it asked for.
But now, with DeLay under investigation, Rove under investigation, Frist under investigation, conservatives rioting over Bush's big government response to Katrina, and all the other fissures opening up in the Republican majority, expect Bush to pick a fight. A real one. He's on infinitely safer ground mobilizing his base for standard-issue partisan than playing it cool and hoping they don't stay home on election day. In 1994, it's an undernoticed fact that much of the Democratic losses came from a lethargic base that yawned at Democrats and refused to mobilize. If Bush doesn't do something to fire up his folks, 2006 will work the same.
