Doesn't sound like a conservative, but then I'm not a lawyer.
I think he is speaking in a language foreign to ordinary citizens. Could it be that he is saying something we ordinary conservatives don't want to hear?
Roberts is a genius. Read between the lines: he is going to move his court away from the till-now frequent 5-4 "divided-court" rulings...due to his superior legal mind persuading his less-brilliant (i.e. lefty) colleagues to vote with him on "narrow" (a-hem) grounds. It has already started. So far, he has gotten an stunning number of unanimous rulings.
If the consensus he seeks is a conservative consensus, than more power to him.
It depends on the meaning of the word consensus.