I’m about the last person who’s going to let the president off the hook on this (or any other) Supreme Court pick, but what an annoying and unfair assessment of the “conservative” state of the administration in USA Today today:

The intensity of Bush’s commitment to social conservatives’ agenda is unclear. For example, the president says he backs a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, but he has never made it a top legislative priority. He opposes abortion but has said repeatedly that the country isn’t ready to ban it.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think it’s the president’s job to be doing the heavy lifting on the marriage amendment. He’s put his name on it, and I wouldn’t expect him to do too much more on it at this point. Other people need to be doing work right now.

As to how conservative he is–No Child Left Behind comes up later in the piece, which is a much more legit concern, of course. The “compassionate conservatism” stuff that came up in The Corner last week. Etc. But his committment to the defending defenseless life isn’t something I lose sleep over.

On abortion: a ban on partial-birth abortion, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, support for the Child Custody Protection Act…this guy’s proven himself. These are not small things. As Ramesh recently wrote, “For the first time since Roe, federal law recognizes the unborn life, at least theoretically, from the moment of conception.”

Which is why I can be (or will insist on being) delusionally confident he’ll send a solid candidate to the Senate.