OBSERVATIONS FOR CULTURAL CONSERVATIVES:

Voting coalitions are ruled by the least committed members.

So the question to the cultural conservatives is: do you want 2004 to be the Republican high water mark or would you like to extend the string?

We’ll find out the answer to that question soon.

UPDATE: Jeff Rosen:

In the last 36 years, four Republican presidents have appointed all but two of the current nine justices.

But on the most contested social issues – abortion, affirmative action, school prayer and gay rights – the court has sided with liberals, while only modestly advancing the deregulatory agenda of the Republicans.

“If the goal of Republican presidents was to build a court that exercised its own power with greater restraint or adhered strictly to the original constitutional text, then they have clearly failed,” said Thomas Keck, a political science professor at Syracuse University and author of “The Most Activist Supreme Court in History.”

Read the whole thing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Of course, as I should have noted, this book is essential reading on the subject!