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If Bush tries to appoint someone without clear pro-life views, the President will face a firestorm from the faithful. FRC's Perkins says he and his allies "absolutely would not [let Bush] go this route" without a fight.

But others are wary of litmus tests. Kay Daly of the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, a conservative group, bristles at the thought. "I detest litmus tests in any form." Her allies are looking more broadly for "strict constructionists," meaning judges who try to respect the original meaning of the Constitution. Of course, economic conservatives say they also like "strict constructionists" regardless of their views on abortion.

Official Washington is like the calm before the storm. Everyone knows that a battle royal over the Supreme Court has been brewing since Chief Justice William Rehnquist disclosed his thyroid cancer.

Christian conservatives are preparing for battle. Coordinating meetings were held after the elections, networks are being extended, the grassroots reinforced, and millions of dollars are being raised. In the Senate, Republicans added two hard-line religious conservatives—Roman Catholic Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Baptist Tom Coburn, R.-Okla.—to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

For both Left and Right, the November election served as the dress rehearsal for a Supreme Court nominee battle. Just prior to the election, conservatives and liberals mobilized independent groups to potential recount battlefields. Christian Legal Society members organized hundreds of lawyers to monitor the polls.

The big recount battle never came. But the money and manpower are still in place. One cls lawyer in New York City who participated in Ohio for two weeks says, "We are all set up and ready to go."

FRC's Perkins lays down the gauntlet to the administration: "If it can't be done now with our working majority, a change in the Supreme Court can't be done."

Christian conservatives also have a number of legislative ideas to ban same-sex marriage, limit abortion, and promote premarital sexual abstinence through the nation's education system.

Job One is passage of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would constitutionally define marriage as "the union of one man and one woman."

Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family vice president, says his organization has been fundraising and building networks for the effort. The pro-marriage-amendment Arlington Group has been meeting with Perkins in Washington since mid-2003. Every six weeks or so, 50 to 70 top activists such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, and Gary Bauer of American Values join in the strategy debates.

But conservatives question Bush's commitment to passage of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Land admits that he hopes the President will be more aggressive. "I want him to do more" than last year, he said. In December, Bush told ABC's Primetime that he would support the amendment "if necessary."

Christian conservatives say that they can't move the amendment through Congress because many allies favor a state-based strategy to ban gay marriage.

For instance, Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., is convinced that the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) already gives states an unhindered right to ban same-sex marriage.

But amendment supporter Pitts disagrees: "Hostettler is in a minority. There is a broad unity on our moral agenda."

Land, a federal amendment supporter, predicts, "[After] the first federal judge who rules DOMA as unconstitutional, we will reach critical mass. Some of our allies won't be able to hide behind the states-rights issue."

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February 2005, Vol. 49, No. 2