Noam Scheiber writes in the New Republic (sub req’d):

Conservatives had lots of reasons to like John Roberts’s nomination to the Supreme Court. But the one they cited most eagerly was that the nominee, barring some unforeseen revelation, was neither a woman nor a minority. David Brooks praised President Bush for “mov[ing] beyond the tokenism of identity politics.” National Review’s Jonah Goldberg was relieved that Bush had “tagged a plain old really smart white guy.” “[B]y not worrying about walking out to the podium last night accompanied by a white male,” William Kristol concluded, “Bush did something important and courageous.”
At the time, the glee with which conservatives greeted Roberts’s white male-ness fell into the category of slightly weird but hardly worth a second thought. In retrospect, it was rather telling. To the extent that Roberts’s nomination has been defined in the early going, it is civil rights issues that have defined it. That has, in turn, produced two reactions on the right. On the one hand, conservatives have continued to warm to Roberts the more they learn about his Reagan-era writings on civil rights. But these discoveries have also created a gnawing, if not quite urgent, sense of anxiety among Republicans–and rightly so.

He then goes on to write about how Roberts’ views in the 1980s no longer represent the consensus on race and therefore they might turn out to be a liability in his confirmation battle. He may be right, since the Left has to attack Roberts with something, so it may well be this.

What bothers me is the really weak connection between conservative “glee” over Bush’s appointment of a white guy and conservative opposition to civil rights issues (as Scheiber defines them). Whatever individual conservatives may think about civil rights these days, I can say with some confidence that the subject wasn’t on our minds at all when we cheered Roberts’ selection. As Ramesh has noted, conservatives haven’t had a reliably conservative Court appointee who’s been confirmed without benefit of identity politics since Rehnquist. People forget, for example, that Scalia’s liberal support stemmed largely from the fact that he’s Italian. Mario Cuomo lobbied relentlessly for Scalia.

When Bush announced Roberts, virtually none of us could have known what was in those memos because they weren’t public yet. What we were excited about was that Bush wasn’t “growing” in office or trying to pad his legacy by buying into the identity politics game. We were excited because A) he went with merit (and young merit at that) and B) because by picking a representative of the pale-skinned patriarchy, Bush was annoying all the right people. We may all be reactionaries on civil rights by Scheiber’s lights or we may not. My only point is that the suggestion in his lead is not supported by his column.