Per the AP, Richardson will employ a simple litmus test for Supreme Court nominees. Maybe it’s more real to say: Richardson will openly employ a litmus test. Because if you think Bush or Clinton or Reagan or Taft were unconcerned with the results of their nominees, then you are a fool.
What will be interesting to watch is the pressure this places on the other candidates. NARAL and other pro-choice groups will, no doubt, try to extract similar pledges. If they get it, that’s good; it moves the center of the party firmly to where the country is (this is a pro-choice nation, after all). Even more interesting is whether the GOP field will have to answer similar questions, with the opposite pledge, of course. That would be even more helpful, since the “mainstream” GOP position (criminalizing virtually all abortions) is so far to the extreme right of America that whenever they debate abortion amongst themselves, we win.