With the revelation of Roberts's involvement in the Romer case, right-wing activists began jumping ship. The leader of a Virginia antigay group, Public Advocate, yanked support with the declaration, "'Freedom' is not embracing perversion." Joseph Farah, editor of the heavily trafficked far-right webzine WorldNetDaily, attacked Justice Sunday's planners in thinly veiled language in an August 12 column: "We now have 'conservative' organizations leading the fight for confirmation of a man [Roberts] who is certain to be a grave disappointment to them." Perhaps most important, Gary Bauer, the former Family Research Council president who built the organization into one of Washington's largest conservative operations during the 1990s, denounced the Bush White House in his daily newsletter for picking a "stealth nominee" and questioned their refusal to release 50,000 pages of Reagan-era Roberts documents.

The position of Justice Sunday II's organizers consisted of halfhearted apologia through gritted teeth. "The Romer case was perhaps one of the most egregious decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court...and to have Roberts be part of that in any way was troubling," Dobson said during an August 8 appearance on Fox News's Hannity & Colmes. But, Dobson assured the audience, "he had a very minor role." When host Sean Hannity peppered him with questions about Roberts's role on Romer, Dobson was forced to concede that "the Republican senators need to vet him [Roberts] also." It was a stunning role reversal, considering that Dobson and his allies had spent the past month attacking Democratic senators who vowed to question Roberts's views on social issues.