Washington, USA - Despite their shared determination to craft a more conservative federal judiciary, it's increasingly clear that Republican leaders and religious right leaders aren't always singing from the same hymn sheet.
Contrast, for example, President Bush's statements in his news conference last Thursday night, and Pat Robertson's statements on ABC's "This Week" Sunday morning. Whereas the president insisted that his bid to fill the bench with more right-leaning judges should not be viewed as a religious crusade ("I view religion as a personal matter"), the veteran religious right leader insisted that the overhaul of the judiciary was indeed a religious crusade.
Acknowledging several passages from his new book - where he charged that liberals were engaging in "an all-out assault on Christianity," and that Democrats wanted to appoint judges who would "dismantle our Christian culture" - Robertson told ABC that the federal judiciary, as currently constituted, represents the biggest threat to America in its history. He warned: "They're destroying the fabric that holds our nation together."
His interviewer, George Stephanopolous, asked whether Robertson was saying that the threat posed by federal judges was more dire than the Civil War, World War II, and the terrorists who struck on Sept. 11. Robertson replied: "I really believe that. ... I think that the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings."
Maybe the differences between the GOP and the religious right are merely stylistic. But it's significant that the Christian leaders' continued willingness to assail the judiciary in apocalyptic religious overtones doesn't mesh with the more measured language of the Republican leadership. This could complicate the GOP's balancing act: the need to please their restive Christian base, while also seeking to assure centrist Americans that the Christian base isn't running the show.
"It's tricky," said Mark Rozell, a George Mason University political analyst who specializes in the religious right. "Religious conservatives do feel they have the power now, and that they can use government to advance their moral vision. And they believe that their vision is the correct one. That's a pretty radical view, given the fact that they live in a pluralistic society."
Repeatedly, in recent weeks, top Republicans have tried to signal their Christian conservative allies that religious-based attacks on Democrats and the judiciary are inappropriate. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said this a week ago, on a religious right broadcast. That same day, Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina weighed in, telling Fox News: "I would call on them not to say that Democratic senators are not people of faith, or (suggesting) that they are religious bigots. I don't think that's fair."
But Robertson Sunday not only assailed Democrats for trying to dismantle Christian culture, but also targeted a sitting Supreme Court justice (and Bill Clinton appointee), Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He said that Ginsburg's previous service as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, "whose purpose right now is to rid religion from the public square," was evidence of her culpability.
It also appears that Frist may be on thin ice with religious conservatives. They expect him to make good on his threat to change Senate rules and erase the Democrats' ability to essentially kill conservative judicial appointees via filibuster; the problem is, since late winter, he has repeatedly postponed the moment of reckoning.
When Robertson was asked Sunday whether he would support Frist as a 2008 presidential candidate, he replied: "I just don't see him as a future president. I think he's said he didn't want to run for president."
Robertson is arguably the most seasoned politician in the religious right - his father was a U.S. senator - and it strains credulity to believe that he is unaware of Frist's early forays to New Hampshire and other early presidential primary states. More likely, Robertson's dismissive remark can be read as a warning to Frist, that he has to break the Democratic opposition if he hopes to win religious right support three years hence.
Robertson was an early Bush backer in 2000, and he mostly stayed silent while Bush stumped for moderate voters. But he's not silent now, with the clock running in the second term. Sunday, he even contested Bush's Thursday statement that citizens are "equally American" regardless of their faith; he suggested that American Muslims might not be good choices for government jobs.
Besides, he said, it's the Christians who are driving the GOP quest to change the judiciary: "There's literally millions of people praying for a change in the Supreme Court. The people of faith in this country feel they're under a tyranny, and they see their liberty taken away from them. And they've been beseeching God, fasting and praying, for years. I think he hears and answers their prayers."
But, just in case his followers need earthly assistance in this battle, Robertson has a trusted lieutenant inside the Bush camp. Attorney Jay Sekulow, who runs Robertson's legal arm (the American Center for Law & Justice), is one of three strategists entrusted by the White House with the job of shepherding Bush's court nominees through the Senate. Regardless of the religious right's restiveness, it is no longer on the outside looking in.