Rude on Scalito

I think Rude sums the whole Alito subject up quite nicely in this post, so I'm mainly just going to link and make a brief comment.

Given how the wingnuts have been howling that criticism of Alito amounts to (surreally) racism or (more recently) anti-Christian bias, it's certainly interesting that Alito is bending over backwards to dodge the abortion question. BushCo. nominated him to appeal to the base, so it should be reasonable to assume that he's anti-abortion. Only, all of the players know that support of Roe v. Wade is still strong enough that they can't go around broadcasting this fact without a kerfluffle.

Arlen Specter managed a disturbingly weak showing when he explained that "[Alito] said that his personal feelings would not be a factor in his judicial decision...With respect to his personal views on a woman's right to choose, he says that that is not a matter to be considered in the deliberation on a constitutional issue of a woman's right to choose. The judicial role is entirely different." And in a vacuum, if it wasn't clear that opposition to Roe. was a key characteristic for this post-Harriet nominee, that might even be a sustainable argument. However, as Rude points out:

Every opportunity that Samuel Alito was given to comment or rule on involving abortion, he attempted to restrict access to or express his dismay with Roe v. Wade. He said, back in 1985, that the federal government should help states "chip away" at Roe. In his job application to be Deputy Assistant Attorney General, he volunteered, without prompting on the issue, that he believed that "the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion." And, of course, in 1991, he dissented from the majority opinion on Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, saying that a woman should be forced to tell her possibly raping, abusive husband that she wants an abortion.

The point is that there's no reason to assume that our boy Harriet Jr. is anything other than an anti-Roe tool. But the backroom players all know that coming out and saying that is going to start a shitfit. And they hope they can make that fact slide through without too many people finding out.