It seems playing to the base under the current administrations situation would be a very bad move.

Although the Republicans would certainly like to bring the Latino voter into their fold, I’ve had my doubts all along that Gonzales would ever be a nominee– and despite what Bush is rumored to have said about it. Why? Too alienating to the GOP base. In addition, Bush strikes me as the kind of guy who would promise a pal like Gonzales a piece of cheese like a SC nomination, at least to keep him loyal and motivated, but not with any clear intention of keeping the promise. Notice how Bush gives almost everyone around him a nickname, and the names are usually deprecatory. Standing alone, that doesn’t conclusively mean anything about what kind of guy Bush is, but, I think that it’s the kind of thing that more tends to show that a person doesn’t take others seriously, and has a patronizing attitude toward them– even if he thinks he doesn’t.

If Bush et al were trying to play to the middle with the Roberts and Miers nominations, it backfired on them with the Miers nomination. Now, what he has to do is more like circling the wagons. He has to deal with political reality: the influence that his party’s base constituents have over their various national representatives. He ran straight into the problem I think he was trying to avoid by not nominating Gonzales.

Of course this same logic suggests that J. Harvie Wilkinson would also be acceptable to the White House.

I imagine that should read “…either Alito or Luttig…”