The chorus denouncing quotas includes former President Bill Clinton. After his 1992 election, some women's groups criticized then President-elect Clinton for failing to appoint what they deemed a sufficient number of females to his administration. Clinton responded, "They're playing quota games and math games. I don't believe in quotas." In states that placed "affirmative action" on the ballot for voter approval -- California and Washington -- voters rejected preferences. And in California, nearly 30 percent of black voters rejected race- and gender-based preferences.
Hubert Humphrey, then Democratic senator from Minnesota, later vice president, co-sponsored the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. Humphrey, hoping to induce votes from reluctant Democrats who feared racial preferences, said, " . . . [N]othing in the bill would permit any official or court to require any employer or labor union to give preferential treatment to any minority group." Humphrey challenged one colleague who raised fears that the bill allowed quotas: "If the Senator can find . . . any language which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color . . . I will start eating the pages one after another, because it is not in there."
Even The New York Times, in their anti-Alito editorial, made no reference whatsoever to the Alito application's opposition to "quotas." The Times obviously knows better than to call opposition to quotas "extreme," even if Sens. Kennedy and Schumer do not.
What about Alito's assertion that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion"? Is this position "extreme"?
In 1985, Harris Polls found that respondents split evenly on Roe v. Wade. Twenty years later, the nation, according to Harris, remains fairly evenly divided on the issue of Roe v. Wade. This places 50 percent of the nation in the "extreme" category.
Even former President Jimmy Carter now says Democrats make a tactical and moral mistake in making the "pro-choice" position so central to the party. "I never have felt that any abortion should be committed," said Carter recently. "I think each abortion is the result of a series of errors. . . . These things impact other issues on which [Mr. Bush] and I basically agree. I've never been convinced, if you let me inject my Christianity into it, that Jesus Christ would approve abortion."
Opposition to quotas -- extreme. Belief that the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion -- extreme. In short, an "extremist" -- to a liberal -- simply means someone with whom they disagree.