John Podhoretz, writing in The New York Post, thinks “the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals handed the Republican Party the keys to a political bulldozer and invited the GOP to flatten American liberalism”:

Why am I so sure this is a political, ideological and financial windfall for Republicans?

Take a journey with me down memory lane back to 1988, when Michael Dukakis, governor of Massachusetts and Democratic presidential candidate, found himself on the wrong side of the Pledge of Allegiance. Using the same logic deployed by the Ninth Circuit yesterday, Dukakis had vetoed a bill requiring teachers to lead students in the Pledge.

So what did Dukakis’ rival, George Bush the Elder, do? He spent three weeks — 21 days — going across the country to flag factories and schools, placing his hand on his heart and reciting the Pledge.

Elite commentators cringed at the demagogic use of patriotic symbols. Sophisticates scoffed. But Dukakis, who’d been 15 points ahead of Bush in polls, went into a public-opinion nose-dive from which he never recovered.

(Eds. note: Sickening opportunism, sure. But this is politics, after all…)

When Bush the Elder took on Dukakis, the nominal subject was the Pledge. But the real subject, the underlying theme, was the discomfort felt by American liberals at the open expression of traditional values, religious faith and patriotic sentiment.

Well, here we are, in 2002. America is at war. The country has just been through a patriotic surge that makes 1988 seem like Kent State. And the federal appeals court that is by all reckonings the nation’s most liberal judicial body has gone and done a Dukakis.

Democratic politicians, for the most part, learned their lesson from the Dukakis fiasco. But this time there’s precious little they can do to avoid the GOP bulldozer. If they agree with Republican pols that the decision was wrong — which Senate Democrats did yesterday by joining in a 99-0 resolution condemning the ruling — they’ll help the GOP raise money.

The Republican Party really ought to send the Ninth Circuit a nice basket of fruit and maybe even some flowers. The judges have made the GOP’s day, week, month and year.

As unseemly as I find this (I found yesterday’s Senatorial histrionics laughable), Podhoretz is likely on to something here. The court’s ruling yesterday served only to trivialize the First Amendment’s establishment clause, and to bolster the prospects for future cases of victimization politics that appeal to notions of “coercion” or “injurious language.” This, more than any visceral connection I have to the phrase “under God,” is why I’m so disappointed with the court’s ruling. It heralds a surrender to language, and as such, it is anything but trivial. Sorry, VP, but you’re wrong on that account.

Like it or not, the general sense among voters is going to be that “liberals” are responsible for such legal speciousness. Which could mean, as Podhoretz suggests, a surge in support for the GOP.

[Related(?): The Supreme Court ruled that vouchers for religious schools are fine. Rand Simberg notes that this ruling may presage how the Supreme Court would likely find on the Ninth Circuit’s Pledge ruling.]

[update: I’m increasingly alone on this one, and it’s frustrating me to no end. Law prof Jeff Cooper writes “the major consequence will be that we will have a massive hue and cry, largely from the right, about an issue that ultimately is trivial.” “Ultimately trivial” because it won’t stand, Jeff? Or because it’s unimportant?

More from Eugene Volokh, who rightly points out that “In a legal system that’s built on analogy and precedent, principles often expand past the boundaries that even their authors originally urged. It’s easy enough to imagine a future court expanding the ‘no endorsement’ / ‘no psychological principle’ to ‘The Star Spangled-Banner’, even if we think that it shouldn’t be.”

That’s legal speak for there is indeed a legitimate slippery slope argument to be made here. Simply intoning “slippery slope” to show that you recognize the characteristics of a certain argumentative fallacy does not make the very real likelihood of such prospects magically disappear.

More — with lots of discussion — from Megan McArdle. Not surprisingly, the prescient Ms. McArdle recognizes what this ruling (should it stand) augurs for future cases claiming harm from “injurious” language.

update the second: Glenn Reynolds provides links to nearly everyone who’s written on the Ninth Circuit Court’s decision here. True, I’m conspicuously absent from his list — but that’s only because Glenn fears my prodigious intellect and my sexy, 70s anti-hero good looks. Additional opinions: Blow Hard, Poorman, Craig Schamp, and Atrios.]