{"id":5879,"date":"2005-11-18T14:00:30","date_gmt":"2005-11-18T19:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5879"},"modified":"2005-11-18T14:00:30","modified_gmt":"2005-11-18T19:00:30","slug":"why-alito-hasnt-sparked-a-national-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/why-alito-hasnt-sparked-a-national-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Alito hasn’t sparked a national conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to the Supreme Court, the right was not only pleased to have vanquished the candidate they disapproved of, but said that a genuinely conservative nominee could finally spark a national discussion about the federal judiciary. It was a conversation they claimed to welcome.<\/p>\n

But as Dahlia Lithwick explained<\/a>, it was a lot easier for conservatives to take this position in the abstract.<\/p>\n

This week’s revelation that Judge Samuel Alito is on record, as early as 1985, insisting that he “personally believes very strongly” that there is no constitutional right to abortion should have conservative pundits and thinkers jigging for joy. After all, they claim that they’re dying to have this big, defining, national conversation about the role of judges; about the need to repair the damage wrought by renegade liberal activists who’ve been trampling all over the Constitution for decades. So, here is Sam Alito, unequivocally opening the door to that national conversation with his personal assertion that Roe is bad law. <\/p>\n

And what are Alito’s supporters, and Alito himself, doing? Backpedaling so fast, all you can see is the blur of their lost integrity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quite right. Alito’s hard-right record<\/a>, primarily shaped by that infamous 1985 Justice Department memo, proved that the conservative movement got the nominee it wanted. And now that they have him … they’re content to keep pretty quiet about it.<\/p>\n

A month ago this week, the National Review’s Ned Rice said<\/a>, “[L]et’s name someone to the Supreme Court whose nomination is guaranteed to trigger a national conversation on the proper role of the judiciary — it can only help the conservative cause.” If that’s true, why is the right so tepid about this conversation now?<\/p>\n

It probably has something to do with the fact that this conversation would likely go badly for them. As Lithwick put it:<\/p>\n

Could it be that the national polls — which indicate robust support for Roe and strong opposition to justices who’d reverse it — have rendered this conversation too dangerous? Or is it the prospect of the national backlash that would follow from actually reversing Roe that has rendered you speechless? Aren’t you eager, finally, to defend the GOP platform, which overtly promises that the president will appoint judges who will defend the “sanctity of life” and overturn Roe? Or are your notions of scrupulous judicial purity less compelling in the cold light of political reality?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Come to think of it, it’s probably a combination of all of these.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to the Supreme Court, the right was not only pleased to have vanquished the candidate they disapproved of, but said that a genuinely conservative nominee could finally spark a national discussion about the federal judiciary. It was a conversation they claimed to welcome. But as Dahlia Lithwick explained, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}