By PAUL CAMPOS

By PAUL CAMPOS
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
The best thing that could happen to the Democratic Party is for the Supreme Court to reverse Roe vs. Wade. Liberal judicial activism in general -- and Roe in particular -- is the biggest gift the Republican Party has ever gotten.
Because of Roe, three generations of Republican politicians have had the luxury of posturing about their opposition to legalized abortion, without ever having to pay the price for that opposition.
If Roe is reversed, abortion will be outlawed in some states -- although in fewer than either activists camp imagine. But an almost certain side-effect of such laws would be a massive backlash against the right wing of the Republican Party, led by moderate swing voters who were willing to vote Republican as long as the party's opposition to legalized abortion remained a matter of theory rather than practice.
A similar dynamic applies to other battlegrounds in the culture wars, such as school prayer. Millions of suburbanites are willing to vote for candidates who promise to cut their taxes and put God back into the schools -- as long as only the first promise gets kept.
But if the Supreme Court swings far enough to the right to allow the Republican Party to enact the legislative program its platform claims to endorse, the fundamental split in the party between cultural conservatives and libertarians -- roughly speaking between those who worship God and mammon -- would soon yawn wider than the Grand Canyon.
Moral values
Nothing would appall the Bush administration more than the prospect of having to actually keep its promises to the 15 million voters who listed "moral values" as their main reason for re-electing the president.
Country club Republicans favor talk of "moral values" to exactly the extent such talk doesn't interfere with maximizing stock market values. Thus liberal judicial decisions that take contentious moral issues out of the legislative arena are a veritable godsend to those who profit (quite literally) from the support of cultural conservatives. Such decisions ensure this support doesn't need to be repaid with political actions that would alienate swing voters.
This is why progressives ought to be furious with the Massachusetts Supreme Court for legalizing gay marriage. That idiotic decision probably did more to ensure the re-election of George W. Bush than any other single factor in the 2004 presidential race.
Indeed, the recent rapid movement toward equal treatment of same-sex couples in America will if anything be impeded by liberal judges who take matters into their own hands.
Liberals' interest
The anti-abortion movement created by Roe would not even exist today if abortion laws had been liberalized democratically, as was already happening when the Supreme Court cut short the democratic process.
In other words, at this point it's actually in the long-term interest of liberals if the Supreme Court pursues an activist right-wing agenda. When soccer moms suddenly realize that voting Republican means getting into bed with NASCAR dads, the fragile alliance that holds together the 51 percent of the voting public that cast their ballots for President Bush will fall apart.
It will be interesting to see if liberals rediscover the virtues of federalism, and conservatives forget them. With Republicans consolidating their hold on all branches of the federal government, it should suddenly become easy for liberals to appreciate why it isn't necessarily a good thing for California and Utah to be governed by uniform, federally mandated laws.
Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, conservatives with their hands on the levers of federal executive, legislative and judicial power are no less likely to abuse that power than were their liberal predecessors, who gave America uniform, federally mandated abortion laws.
XPaul Campos is a law professor at the University of Colorado.