I’m traveling today and haven’t been able to post.
I really don’t want to take more shots at Sen. McCain. But if Ramesh is right, this is suggestive of unseriousness. You’ve got to be on drugs if you think Chief Justice Roberts is inherently more acceptable to liberal Democrats than Justice Alito. I mean, c’mon: This can’t be divorced from context. Roberts got a relatively easy time of it because, as it worked out, he was replacing Chief Justice Rehnquist. Confirming him made the Dems look reasonable at a time they were blocking Bush nominees to the Circuit Courts without changing the ideological balance on the court. It was a lay-up.
By contrast, Alito was replacing Justice O’Connor and thus shifting the Court to the Right. THAT, and not something about Alito that was purportedly absent in Roberts, is what impelled Democrats to rake him over the coals.
Had Alito been first and Roberts second, the Left would have hated Roberts just as much. I don’t know if Sen. McCain said what some have accused him of saying, but if he did it indicates that his assessment of a nominee will be colored by the Democrats’ reasons for opposing the nominee, and that’s not good.