This is not good news for gun owners, or Second Amendment advocates, given that Bork is a well known advocate of collective right theory. Of course, this also isn’t the end of the world, given that Bork won’t be choosing himself. There won’t be too many candidates on Romney’s short list that will be embracers of collective rights. There are a few, however, and we have to watch out for them. The big fear is that Romney doesn’t really understand the subtleties of “conservatism:, since he is not one himself, and attempts to pander in a ridiculous and stupid way, using logic like “Reagan appointed Bork, conservatives love Reagan and therefore conservatives must also love Bork.”
Bush bungled a nomination too, with Harriet Meyers, but we had the benefit of other parts of the right-of-center coalition being unhappy. The real risk, and this risk was present with Bush, is that Romney would pick someone acceptable to other parts of the movement, except for gun owners, and we standing alone don’t have the power to scuttle the nominee. But whether we can do that or not is up to us; we certainly have the people power enough to accomplish it.
