Via the NYT: Gonzales Is Mentioned in Supreme Court Remarks

President Bush said Tuesday that his list of candidates to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was “wide open,” and he jokingly but pointedly singled out Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

This, of course, set off alarm bells in some quarters:

But by mentioning Mr. Gonzales, however lightheartedly, Mr. Bush increased the likelihood that conservative groups would reprise and perhaps intensify their largely behind-the-scenes effort earlier this summer to convince the White House that selecting Mr. Gonzales for Justice O’Connor’s seat would be a betrayal of his most ardent supporters.

“Would any of his aides have the nerve to tell him that as Supreme Court jurists go, Gonzales would be mediocre - and not a solid bet to move the court in a constitutionalist direction?” William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, wrote in an article posted Tuesday afternoon on that conservative magazine’s Web site. “Would any of them have the nerve to explain to the president that a Gonzales nomination would utterly demoralize many of his supporters, who are sticking with him and his party, through troubles in Iraq and screw-ups with Hurricane Katrina, precisely because they want a few important things out of a Bush presidency - and one of these is a more conservative court?”

And the following would seem to be the wisest course:

The White House has already signaled that Mr. Bush will not announce a selection of a new replacement for Justice O’Connor this week. The president went further on Tuesday, suggesting that he would hold off on a selection at least until Judge Roberts’s nomination reached the Senate floor, if not until he was confirmed.

“I want the Senate to focus not on who the next nominee is going to be, but the nominee I’ve got up there now,” Mr. Bush said.

One does wonder if Edith Clement, rumored at one point to be Bush’s pick before Roberts was named, won’t find that the second time is the charm. She is female and the 5th Circuit, which is in New Orleans. Although she isn’t, strictly speaking, for New Orleans (she’s from Alabama), although she has been working in Louisiana since at least 1991 when she was appointed to the US District Court by George H. W. Bush..