A prescription drug entitlement is not inherently unconservative, unless the welfare state itself is -- and it isn't. If the pharmacological revolution that has occurred since Medicare was enacted in 1965 had occurred by then, some such entitlement would have been included. But the administration probably will approve an entitlement of unknowable cost ($400 billion over 10 years is today's guess, which is probably low), without reform of Medicare.
The conservative faction that focuses on constitutionalism and democratic due process winced when the president seemed to approve of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's opinion affirming the constitutionality of racial preferences for diversity in higher education -- and perhaps in many other spheres of life. The concept of group rights -- of government complicity in allocating wealth and opportunity on the basis of skin pigmentation -- now has a conservative president's imprimatur.
Finally, this summer the faction called ``social conservatives'' has been essentially read out of America's political conversation. Their agenda has been stigmatized as morally wrong and constitutionally dubious by the Supreme Court, seven of whose nine members are Republican appointees. Justice Anthony Kennedy -- like O'Connor, a Reagan appointee -- wrote the opinion striking down a Texas law criminalizing consensual adult homosexual acts. Kennedy asserted, in effect, that laws intended to strengthen a majority's moral principles -- laws of a sort America has never been without -- are constitutionally suspect.
The president is rightly reluctant to endorse a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a heterosexual institution: constitutionalizing social policy is generally unwise. But the administration's principal objective may be to avoid fights about cultural questions. Two weeks ago the administration reaffirmed the irrational and unfair implementation standards of the Title IX ban on sex discrimination in college athletics. Those standards are now immortal, having received a conservative administration's approval.
What blow will befall conservatives next? Watch the Supreme Court, the composition of which matters more than does the composition of Congress.
Justice David Souter, nominated by the first President Bush, quickly became a reliable member of the Supreme Court's liberal bloc. Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel who came with this President Bush from Texas, may be chosen to fill the next court vacancy. The likelihood of a vacancy during this presidency has given rise to a grim joke among conservatives:
How do you say ``Souter'' in Spanish? ``Gonzales.''