While the right-wing's ideological criticism of Harriet Miers may have been crude, it was at least straightforward. The same goes for at least one conservative blog's take on Michael McConnell as "not partisan enough" for his criticism of Bush v. Gore. Turning Supreme Court nominations into just another battle about political and cultural values probably isn't the greatest development in the world, but at least the right wing has been honest about what's really going on. Though the liberal groups opposing Alito have my ideological sympathies, I cringe when I see the heavy-handed and misleading talking points that some are already putting out about the Alito nomination. It's, of course, possible to get a sense of a judge's ideology from his overall pattern of rulings, but it's completely outrageous to attribute any given opinion to a judge as stating his personal beliefs. Alito has a long record, so there's no need to engage in aggressive overreadings of relatively innocuous judicial opinions or 20-year-old briefs written on behalf of a conservative administration.
In fact, why make it personal at all? The Miers debate made it obvious that the right is looking for nothing more than, essentially, a cog in the machine - a justice who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade (and side with them on a few other hot-button "cultural issues"), and whose prose and reasoning won't be embarrassing. So why can't the left oppose him on the same grounds - especially since their side happens to be far more popular? (The fact that Alito would add virtually nothing in the way of diversity, in the ideological sense as well as the Grutter one, also seems fair game.) I understand that it's necessary to communicate sometimes complex and technical legal issues to the general public, but it shouldn't be necessary to distort the whole process of judging in order to do so.
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