The Harriet Miers circus has made me wonder how conservative John Roberts really is. The more I learn about Miers, the more I think about whether Bush really shares any of the goals of the theocrats and institutional conservatives who get all excited about Scalia. A lot of my belief in Roberts’ conservatism derived from a belief that Bush would choose a nominee who would advance conservative goals. Roberts was stealthy enough that I didn’t have much other than this to go on. But given what seems to be the case with Miers, Bush simply didn’t care about advancing deep conservative goals with his second nominee. So why should I think he tried with the first?
Of course, we don’t know nearly enough about either nominee, and Roberts’ wife was legal counsel for a (strange) anti-abortion organization. But for the first time I regard it as within the realm of possibility that Bush will make the number of pro-Roe justices rise to 7 rather than decline to 5.
