I don’t think it’s as substantial as Fred Barnes thinks.

He writes: “In choosing [the next] nominee, the president has an opportunity to achieve a goal that has eluded conservatives for nearly four decades: a Supreme Court with a conservative majority on most issues.”

After discussing various Republican presidents’ attempts to create a conservative majority, he concludes: “Now it’s George W. Bush’s moment to finish the process.”

No, it isn’t. By the standards of Barnes’s own piece–in which Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy are held to be disappointments for conservatives–conservatives are outnumbered 3 to 6. Holding the Rehnquist seat and replacing O’Connor with a conservative still leaves conservatives with four votes. If the next nominee is a conservative, conservatives still have a ways to go. If the next nominee isn’t a conservative, liberals have an extra cushion. The stakes are higher, therefore, for conservatives than their opponents. And this is no time to get cocky.