Alito raises doubts — from his side

November 11, 2005

Earlier this week, the WaPo ran an item, on the front page, explaining that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito “has signaled he would be highly reluctant to overturn long-standing precedents such as the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling.”

The piece went on to quote a variety of senators, most of them pro-choice centrists, who seemed pleased to hear directly from Alito about his respect for long-standing precedent. But what about the anti-abortion activists who are counting on Alito to get on the high court and overturn Roe? Apparently, their concerns about Alito are getting more and more serious.

“I don’t know what his personal views are, but I know that he has ruled on pro-life cases four times and he has ruled against pro-life positions three times. And the fourth was a split decision,” said Richard Collier, president of the Legal Center for the Defense of Life, based in Morristown, N.J. “If you look at the paper trail, it is all negative.” […]

A leading antiabortion group, the National Right to Life Committee, has not taken a formal position on Alito’s nomination, but the organization’s website suggests that the group considers his record on abortion to be mixed at best.

“In examining his record, there are four principal abortion-related cases,” the group’s website states. “Judge Alito voted in favor of the pro-life side once and against it three times.”

I’ve largely assumed that the far right would get a wink and a nod from the White House, effectively telling these activists, “Don’t worry, he’s with us.”

Maybe it’s a sign of Bush’s falling national support, or maybe it’s a byproduct of the Harriet Miers mess, but these groups sound awfully concerned about Alito and aren’t willing to take Bush’s word on faith. It’s not enough to formally oppose his nomination, of course, but the LA Times talked to a series of state and national anti-abortion groups, all of which expressed varying degrees of reservations.

“I have never heard a peep of protest on precedents from Judge Alito,” Collier said. “He has not advanced the ball intellectually on how to overturn Roe and Casey.”

A potential problem area for the nomination?

This is getting weird.

If Alito won’t overturn Roe, isn’t that a good thing?

Is there something else about Alito’s conservatism that is more threatening than his possible vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade?

Or are you just noting with glee the further disintegration of the unnatural alliances of interests that is so sadly mis-labeled as ‘American Conservatism’?

  • I guess the social conservatives still haven’t figured it out yet that the Republican leadership doesn’t give a shit about abortion; and would prefer that Roe was never overturned. I’m not saying that’s the case with Alito, but it certainly seems like it.

    The righties should be demanding a far-right nominee who makes no bones about his rightwing stance. They believe that America is in-tune with their way of thinking, and anything else is a slap in the face of that theory. And our best way of getting rid of Alito is by reminding the righties of this all the time. And if Alito isn’t a far-rightie, and this doesn’t help shoot down his nomination, then perhaps it will finally convince the soc-cons that the Republicans aren’t on their side.

  • The problem with any assurances in this confirmation is what the previous post was concerned about, that he reneged on his commitment from the last confirmation to recuse himself in a particular case. This should effectively kill his credibility in anything he tells us in this confirmation.

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