That’s the title of my new Confirmation Tales post, which explores how Fifth Circuit nominee William Pryor went from being trapped in filibuster limbo in 2003 to being recess-appointed in 2004 to being confirmed by the Senate in 2005. An excerpt from my introduction:

Pryor’s judicial career might well have ended when his recess appointment expired at the end of the Senate’s 2005 session. But that’s not at all how things turned out. The extraordinary measures by liberal Democrats to block Bush’s judicial nominees backfired on them. Pryor’s blunt and direct testimony on Roe v. Wade and abortion had the ironic effect of ensuring that he was ultimately confirmed.
Liberal Democrats had aimed to stigmatize as unacceptable any judicial nominee who opposed Roe. But their more moderate colleagues who joined the bipartisan “Gang of 14 Agreement” in May 2005 expressly recognized that it was not disqualifying for an appellate nominee to regard Roe as “the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law” and to decry that it had “led to the slaughter of millions of innocent unborn children.”
Pryor’s confirmation in June 2005 helped pave the way for Samuel Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court in January 2006—and for the overturning of Roe many years later.

Please sign up for Confirmation Tales.