Bush Gets Warning on Court If He Picks Gonzales As Justice, Activists on Right Could Rebel

Conservative groups confronted President George W. Bush with a groundswell of opposition this weekend against nominating his attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, to the U.S. Supreme Court, warning in private meetings and public statements that doing so would splinter conservative support.

Within hours of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s announcement on Friday of her retirement, members of conservative groups around the country convened in different combinations in five national conference calls in which many participants said they shared their concerns about Gonzales, whose opposition to abortion they regard as suspect.

At least one prominent Latino evangelical group urged Bush to name another Hispanic candidate, Emilio Garza, a U.S. appeals court judge from Texas.

Late last week, a delegation of conservative lawyers led by C. Boyden Gray and former Attorney General Edwin Meese III and including Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the evangelical American Center for Law and Justice, and Leonard Leo, a top official of the Federalist Society and director of Republican outreach to Roman Catholics met with the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card Jr., to voice similar views, according to allies who were briefed afterward.

On Friday, the Reverend Miguel Rivera, president of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, a group that represents more than 6,000 Latino evangelical churches in the United States, sent the president a letter that urged consideration of “a true conservative Latino nominee,” Garza.

Contacted by telephone late Friday, Rivera said he had not received a response. In “all the meetings we have had in all the different groups today, we have not heard anything to reassure us that he is out of the loop,” Rivera said of Gonzales.

[Gonzales visited Baghdad to meet with Iraqi officials as well as U.S. lawyers helping Iraq build a case against Saddam Hussein and his chief aides, according to a Reuters report from Baghdad.] Administration officials discounted the conservative uprising against Gonzales, saying that Bush was already aware of the objections and was not convinced by them.

“It is what it is,” said one senior administration official, who insisted on anonymity in exchange for discussing the White House views of the criticism of the attorney general. “The president is going to pick someone who is a true constructionist and who is correct in interpreting the law.” The official said that Gonzales fit that description, but also that Bush might be wary of moving him to a new position so shortly after he was confirmed as attorney general.

The flurry of concern over Gonzales was just one sign of the conflicting forces that face Bush, who was at Camp David for the Fourth of July holiday weekend, with his aides having declared that he would not announce any decision before the end of this week.

Democrats in the U.S. Senate said that Bush should consult them before making a choice and that he should appoint a pragmatist in O’Connor’s mold. Conservatives, flexing their muscles in a battle that they have spent a decade preparing for, described the nomination as a test of Bush’s convictions, and his biggest opportunity yet to ensure that his presidency will leave a conservative stamp for a generation to come.

Bush planned to spend the weekend getting a head start on “homework” on a list of potential nominees, and expected to “be on the phones with his advisers,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. He said the president had been briefed on his staff’s preparations for a court vacancy, and that “he knows the orbit of names.”

Other White House aides said they had canceled holiday plans to prepare for a fight whose dimensions and intensity would be, to a considerable extent, dictated by the nominee Bush settles on.

Members of Congress and conservatives close to the White House said that they were confident that Bush would use the first Supreme Court vacancy of his presidency to nominate a judge in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as he repeatedly promised during the campaign.

“They don’t need me lobbying on this stuff they know what to do,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, an organization with close ties to the White House. “My only recommendation is that they nominate someone who is 12 or 13 years old,” to ensure as long a conservative legacy as possible.

Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah and a veteran and former chairman of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, suggested in an interview that he would support Gonzales.

“Let me not get into any nominee, but Gonzales is an excellent human being,” Hatch said. “He’s done an exceptional job as White House counsel. He’s brought additional stability and peace to the Justice Department. I know the president is interested in trying to find people of diversity he’s really bent over to do that as president of the United States.”

Gonzales is a longtime Bush aide and friend from Texas. Naming him could enhance the Republican Party’s standing among Hispanics, one of the president’s longtime political goals.

But the swift and vociferous opposition to Gonzales reflected the intensity of concern on the right over just what kind of conservative Bush would choose, as he moves toward a decision that will go a long way toward settling any question about what kind of conservative he is, and how his presidency will be remembered.

For many conservatives, who have seen Republican presidents nominate Supreme Court justices like O’Connor who then vote against them on key issues, Gonzales epitomizes the fear of the unknown.

To some Democrats, he is very well known, confirmed by a vote of 60 to 36, along largely partisan lines, after unexpectedly contentious hearings and debate in which Democrats challenged his policies on the detention and treatment of prisoners in the administration’s campaign against terror. In a 2002 legal memorandum, Gonzales characterized as “obsolete” the Geneva Conventions’ limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners, and he said provisions in the conventions like commissary privileges and athletic uniforms were “quaint.”

“He would face stiff opposition from liberal groups,” said Nan Aron, president of a liberal legal group, Alliance for Justice. “He would have to answer tough questions about his role in the administration’s war on terror.”

Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York who is a member of the Judiciary Committee, called the situation with Gonzales “a real Rubicon for this president. The hard, hard right wants a true believer.”

Some Republicans warned that a very conservative nomination by Bush would guarantee a protracted Senate battle that could doom any hope of pushing through a tax reform bill.

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Todd S. Purdum and David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Washington for this article, and Adam Nagourney from New York. Richard W. Stevenson contributed reporting from Washington.