Part of the process

"[The Schiavo case] is a clash between the social conservatives and the process conservatives, and I would count myself a process conservative," said David Davenport of the Hoover Institute, a conservative research organization.

"Process conservatives." I Googled it in quotation marks and got only 152 hits. Few if any of the pages use the words "process conservative" to describe a political philosophy or stance. I think we might be witnessing the coinage of a term here. In this case, Davenport is saying that he's a stickler for process, that Congress doesn't have the right to intervene in the state judicial process. Okay. Economic conservatives, social conservatives, and now process conservatives.

I imagine "process conservatives" could also be people who rail against the "judicial activism" that legitimized gay marriage, rather than social conservatives who simply think homosexuality is an abomination. Economic conservatives might actually think the state should not intervene in marriages at all -- that's what my libertarian friends say, anyway.

So what's a "process liberal"? Probably one who supports an outcome he thinks is just, but is willing to make up his own rules in order to see it happen. Hmm.


Now playing: R.E.M.'s Chronic Town ("was the first EP...")