Teddy Kennedy draws from the Alito record these disqualifying emanations: Alito's 1964 support for Barry Goldwater; a sense that "average Americans have had a hard time getting a fair shake in his courtroom"; and in the year of his graduation (1972) membership in a group formed by alumni opposing certain trends at Princeton.
Perhaps these trends are personified in Princeton emeritus professor Walter Murphy, young Alito's senior-thesis adviser: "I confess surprise that a man so dreadfully intellectually and morally challenged as George Bush would want a person as intellectually gifted, independent and morally principled as Sam Alito on the bench." (This is the same challenged Bush who describes Judge Alito as "scholarly, fair-minded, and principled . . . with more prior judicial experience than any Supreme Court nominee in more than 70 years.")
While Judge Alito twisted out there for several months, his severest critics could concoct only that meringue.
No wonder the polled public supports his confirmation - at 53 percent, a number higher than the approval ratings of the President who nominated him. These factors also may be in play: (1) The Democrats know 55 Republican Senators can go to the nuclear option and end a filibuster if they choose, and confirm Judge Alito with a mere 51 votes.
(2) In the public mind, the extreme Democratic left may have reached the end of the tether. Maybe the public at last has grown so exasperated with the rhetorical antics of the left that it no longer cares - and so no longer pays any attention to Howard Dean screaming that Sam Alito lies, or to the hero of Chappaquiddick caterwauling about Sam Alito's credibility and character.
In the 1990s, the Judiciary Committee voted 18-0 to confirm Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer - among the court's most liberal members; the Senate went on to confirm Ginsburg 96-3 and Breyer 87-9. A man of erudition and modesty, Alito believes devoutly in judicial restraint and the rule of law. Though manifestly a conservative, he merits from an effete liberalism support at least equal, in terms of confirmation votes, to that given Breyer and Mrs. Ginsburg a dozen years ago.