Well, on Rehnquist, I think he's just being his usual stubborn self. He's going to retire, but because everyone expects him to retire, he doesn't want to do it now and let everyone be right. He's waiting until their guard is down so he can surprise everyone.

As for O'Connor, I think Bush is just having difficulty deciding how to handle this. First off, all his top Supreme Court potentials are white males with the exception of Alberto Gonzales, who is a hispanic male. That means that Bush would be appointing a male to replace a female which won't look good. And if he goes with Gonzales hoping to offset not choosing a woman by nominating the first hispanic to the Court, he'll be appointing a social moderate, not the strong social conservative much of his base wants him to appoint.

But it gets worse. If he goes with the strong social conservative judge, or at the very least a strong federalist judge (pro-deference to the states) like J. Michael Luttig, which would probably also sit well with the social conservatives (the southern states where most social conservatives live would pass more socially conservative laws if the Supeme Court would let them), Bush would end up angering the business conservatives who are also a big part of his base. Business conservatives dislike state law which create a hodge-podge of rules instead of a single standard for the whole country, and they dislike deference to the states which tend to be less business friendly.

The Republican Party, much like the Canadian Conservative Party, is a tenuous alliance between business conservatives and social conservatives, neither of whom really like the other. Bush seems to be having trouble figuring out how to handle both groups with his Supreme Court nomination. Perhaps his strategy is to wait out for Rehnquist so that with two nominations on the table, he can maybe appease both groups with a nomination each (not likely to work), or at least make the news coverage more complicated so there's no focus for attacks on him.

In other news, advertising over the nomination fight has already started even though we don't have a nominee to fight over yet. I told you things were going to get heated!