Splat...“Yesterday in New Jersey, we had another activist court issue a ruling that raises doubts about the institution of marriage,” Bush said yesterday. The New York Times now has the story atop their Web site and the Post has a piece about religious conservatives cheering the ruling — not because they like it but because they think it’ll fire up their base. “Pro-traditional-marriage organizations ought to give a distinguished service award to the New Jersey Supreme Court,” a top Christian conservative told the Post. What they really ought to do is come up with a better label than ‘pro-traditional-marriage.’ That’s a little clunky, don’t you think?

But the real issue here is that the New Jersey court didn’t legalize gay marriage. All it did was say that gay couples have the same legal rights—hospital visitation, inheritance, etc.—that straight couples have. It’s unclear—as journalists like to say—how that “raises doubts about the institution of marriage.”

It’s also unclear how Rove can get the Christian conservative army marching against the specter of civil unions. If that’s the branch the Republican Party is grasping for as it falls alongside the cliff, Wile E. Coyote style, then they’re likely to meet the same fate he always does.