Buchanan: Let slip the dogs of the Judges' War.

The Supreme Court is all about power and who will wield it, the Bad Guys or the Slightly Less Bad Guys.

Pat Buchanan gets it. Does CuriousGeorge BushMonkey?

Attacks upon court decisions seen as pro-criminal and anti-Christian have been a staple of Republican oratory that has given the GOP seven victories in 10 presidential elections and raised party strength from a third of the House and Senate in 1965, to majorities in both houses in 2005.

Hence the Judges War. Left and Right both know that at stake in the nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor is control of the last citadel of liberal power in America. For not one of the radical reforms imposed by our judicial dictatorship would have been approved by Congress.

If conservatives can recapture the court, social and moral issues can be returned to where they belong: elected legislatures and executives. The Left will lose its power to advance its social agenda and see a rollback of a revolution imposed undemocratically upon America over 50 years.

The Left gets it. Liberals smeared Nixon nominees Haynesworth and Carswell as racists and tried to derail Rehnquist. They gave Reagan's moderate nominee, O'Connor, a pass, while savaging conservative Robert Bork. They let Bush I's stealth candidate Souter through, but attempted the "high-tech lynching" of Clarence Thomas.

But Republicans often do not get it. Clinton nominees Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg sailed through without resistance. Though Ginsberg was a card-carrying ACLU activist, she got every GOP vote but those of Jesse Helms and two others.

Does Bush get it? He needs three seats to capture the court, that of Chief Justice Rehnquist when he retires, that of O'Connor, now open, and that of one other justice, as long as it is not Antonin Scalia or Thomas.

Bush can succeed where every Republican president in 50 years failed: to rein in this radical and renegade court and restore the Constitution to its rightful place as the highest law in the land: to be interpreted by Supreme Court justices, and not perverted to their own ideological and political ends.

To succeed will take perseverance and courage by President Bush. But if he does, he will leave a mark on history. It will be his greatest domestic achievement, for which his country will forever remember him, his friends will praise him and his enemies will be eternally gnashing their teeth. Let's get it on.