But abortion is not an issue that will broaden the anti-Alito bloc beyond the 22 hard-core senators who voted against Roberts. Accordingly, Alito's 15 years as an appellate judge have been mined to yield controversial decisions that could not be found in Roberts' two years on the District of Columbia circuit court, which dealt largely with administrative cases. Alito's dissents on criminal-search and gun-control cases are cited to turn him into a "jack-booted thug." This characterization might seem more credible for Alito, the son of an Italian immigrant, than for Roberts, whose father was a corporate executive.
Alito's strategists reply with "law enforcement week," emphasizing his endorsement by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). To assail Alito's decisions, said FOP President Chuck Canterbury, is "like attacking a police officer for doing his job and making arrests."
An Internet ad distributed by the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network to over 10 million users this week will fire back on critics of Alito's dissent validating the search of the young daughter of a suspected drug dealer. It contended that "left-wing extremists opposing" Alito "may have found new allies -- drug dealers who hide drugs on children." The ad is also sent on the Internet to Grassfire.org, a conservative activist group with 1.5 million members that produced 700,000 signatures in support of an amendment opposing homosexual marriages.
The intent of this effort is to keep Alito's opposition in the Senate below the 41 votes needed to defeat a cloture motion stopping a filibuster. But even if his foes fall just short of that level, the hope on the left is that such a showing will dissuade Bush from naming another Roberts or Alito to the next vacancy on the court. The Senate's confirmation process has been degraded into an endless political campaign.