Big push for judge surprises liberals

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The White House's heavily orchestrated campaign to quickly define Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. to America and the U.S. Senate -- using the Republican Party's top strategist and a well-respected former senator -- has left Democrats and liberal groups flat-footed.

Even before President Bush wielded the hefty power of the presidency by making a prime-time, nationally televised announcement, Karl Rove was working the phones. Mr. Bush's top political adviser called such key conservative leaders as C. Boyden Gray, former Attorney General Edwin Meese III of the Heritage Foundation and Leonard Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society and the head of Catholic outreach for the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie -- working out of the West Wing office granted to him to manage Mr. Bush's Supreme Court confirmation battle -- put into action a complex plan to win the early public relations battle to define Judge Roberts, on Capitol Hill and beyond.

The aggressive early onslaught has worked for these earliest days, said Charlie Black, a Republican strategist with close ties to the White House.

"The left-wing groups have blinked, and some of them have not gone out with their advertising yet," he said.

"We knew going in that the left-wing groups had 50 or 60 million bucks to run a public campaign against the nominee. So naturally, our side went out and did planning and raised money to prepare for that kind of fight," Mr. Black said.

Just 36 hours after Mr. Bush named his nominee, a new Associated Press poll found that Americans favor confirmation of Judge Roberts by a wide margin, 47 percent to 24 percent, with the rest undecided.

Top Democrats also spent the past two days expressing admiration for Judge Roberts.

"This is a credible nominee, and not one that -- as far as we know now -- has a record that in any sense could be described as extremist," Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut said yesterday.

Democrats were hamstrung, said former Clinton pollster Dick Morris, noting that senators unanimously put Judge Roberts on the federal bench in 2003.