Unfortunately, though, I'm not sure it could be much worse.
Kennedy has no real judicial philosophy and seems to regard himself as the great Balancer of the Court. According to former clerks, he revels in the admiration he's received from the Eastern media for having "grown in the job."
I suspect that with a more solid 4-4 divide on the Court, he will begin to flip-flop even more wildly to keep things "balanced." Sadly, it will still take yet one more real conservative to swing the court to the correct side.
I think the Supreme Court is much less easily categorized as people tend to categorize them. It's true that on a number of the hotbutton issues there are three solid conservatives, four solid liberals, and two swing votes (I'm assuming Roberts is going to be much like Rehnquist was in terms of his votes, which seems overwhelmingly likely). One thing that's most commonly misrepresented is Kennedy's position with respect to O'Connor. She tends to vote with the solid conservatives more than he does. On the most notable issue for evangelicals, abortion, he's a little more conservative. He didn't oppose the partial birth abortion ban. But on more issues from 1994-2005 he's with Souter, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer than with Thomas, Scalia, or Rehnquist.
A good issue to see where the popular conception categories don't work is free speech. (See Eugene Volokh's column for more detail on this.) Kennedy is the most in favor of free speech of the whole Supreme Court. Almost as conservative (in the sense that allowing people freedom of speech is conservative) after him are Thomas and Souter. Stevens, Scalia, and Ginsburg as the swing votes on free speech. The most restrictive are O'Connor, Rehnquist, and Breyer.
If you used the traditional labels, you would have a moderate, a liberal, and a conservative on one end. The middle contains a conservative and two liberals. The other extreme contains a liberal, a moderate, and a conservative.
The other thing I want to say about this is that Kennedy does have some judicial philosophy. He's consistently in favor of free speech more than anyone else. That means he has some underlying view about how free speech fits in with the law. He may not have the sort of judicial philosophy that takes just one standard and insists on it fully, and his views may not too results-oriented and too little process-orientated, but that's still a judicial philosophy.
