Christian activists are sending out floods of e-mails and calling AM radio talk shows. Lefty progressives are publishing press releases and posting heated editorials to their web pages. And they're both worried about the same thing: Bush's recess appointment of Judge Charles Pickering to the federal appellate bench.

Pickering has been consistently (and, indeed, largely unfairly) attacked for his efforts to reduce the sentence of a convicted cross-burner (as Byron York argues, there arguably wasn't the mens rea of racism on the part of the person Pickering was concerned with). But Pickering has been opposed by many evangelical groups because of his legally-tolerant views on homosexuality, which led to vocal support by the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative gay group. As much as Democrats have savaged Pickering for political reasons, evangelicals detest him for substantive ones.

Evangelicals are not a naturally politically-active group, and their support for the GOP has never been that of party loyalists; if spurned, they simply don't show up to vote. In 1996, their turnout in the Presidential election was the first drop in total numbers in five elections, and Dole suffered for it. If Bush doesn't spend more time working on conservative Christian issues, he may find a softer support base than expected come November.