Ashcroft fight seen as setting battle lines; Preview: Opponents send a message to keep Bush from nominating strong conservatives to the Supreme Court

WASHINGTON (AP) - The fight over John Ashcroft's nomination asattorney general is a preview of the ideological and politicalcontests sure to surround any conservative President Bush mightselect for the Supreme Court, those on both sides of the Ashcroftbattle agree.

Although even his harshest critics concede that the deeplyconservative former Missouri senator is likely to be confirmed tohead the Justice Department, liberal groups and some senators hopeto rough him up in the process.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee delayed a vote onAshcroft until this week, and have had him busy answering more than360 written questions in the meantime.

Opponents hope that an early, tough nomination battle might helpdissuade Bush from naming strong conservative ideologues to theSupreme Court.

"The effort on Ashcroft will send a warning to the Bushadministration early on that we will not stand by if he nominatesjudges hostile to civil rights and liberties," said Nan Aron, headof Alliance for Justice, an umbrella organization for liberal causesthat was a prime opponent to the Supreme Court nomination of RobertBork, whom the Senate rejected.

Ashcroft, who lost re-election in November, is the mostconservative of Bush's Cabinet choices, and the nomination fight haspartisan juices flowing on both sides.

"They don't hope to defeat him. They hope to send a strong signalto George Bush that he better not send anybody conservative to theSupreme Court," Ashcroft defender Sen. Jon Kyl said before bitterSenate hearings.

Numerous liberal interest groups - including the NAACP, PlannedParenthood Federation of America and the civil liberties groupPeople for the American Way - are pressuring Democratic senators tooppose Ashcroft's nomination.

Those groups would surely line up the same way against a veryconservative Bush court nominee, and make many of the samearguments.

No Republicans in the evenly divided Senate have expressedopposition and while a few Democrats have announced they intend tovote against Ashcroft, several others say they will support him.

On Tuesday, People for the American Way delivered petitions toCapitol Hill with more than 150,000 signatures collected from itsanti-Ashcroft Web site. It is running a $250,000 newspaperadvertising campaign this week. Abortion-rights groups are runningradio ads and Internet campaigns.

"I think you'd pretty much predict that those same liberal groupsare going to be opposed to any Bush nominee," down the line in theBush administration, said Crystal Roberts, legal policy analyst atthe conservative Family Research Council, part of a network ofconservative legal and religious groups, as well as Republican Partymachinery, that support Ashcroft.

As a former senator, Ashcroft has an almost automatic level ofsupport among his former colleagues that would not be given to aSupreme Court nominee from outside the Senate who held the sameviews on abortion, gun control and other hot political issues, saidGeorgetown University law professor Susan Low Bloch.

"Normally the Senate is more deferential to a Cabinet appointmentthan to a life-tenured judicial appointment anyway, so if this isvery contentious then it certainly signifies that a Supreme Courtnomination will be that much more contentious," Bloch said.

None of the current nine Supreme Court justices has announcedplans to retire, but many court scholars and politicians assume atleast one vacancy will develop during Bush's four-year term, andthat he could nominate several justices if he is re-elected.

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