A few hours after Miguel Estrada withdrew his name for a judgeship on the Court of Appeals for the Washington, DC, Circuit, a leading Senate liberal was asked about the meaning of the two-year fight. "Estrada was a sacrificial lamb," this senator, who had helped slaughter him, said. "The White House wants the fights as much as they want the judges. This is partly about Karl Rove thinking these judicial fights will help get out the vote from the Republican Party's base next year. We keep getting sent these nonmainstream judicial nominees as part of a political strategy to excite the Christian right and the antiabortion fanatics."

The next day Nan Aron, the president of the liberal Alliance for Justice, said almost the same thing about the vote on Estrada, whose refusal to disclose his beliefs or his memos angered members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "This is base politics for Bush," she said. "He will use the bad judges we stop as a wedge issue next year. They want martyrs. They also want extreme judges to remake America through the federal judiciary. Karl Rove sees this as a win-win situation for the White House."

But Bush and Rove may be miscalculating. There is no evidence the prolonged conflict over Estrada's nomination penetrated the consciousness of the Latino voters the GOP is trying to woo.

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