SCOTUS: Conservative Talking Points Tame Compared to Trashings Past

Matt Lewis reported yesterday on the opposition research memorandum prepared by the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network and distributed widely to supporters on the right. The memo offers critical profiles of three potential nominees President Obama is said to be considering for the Supreme Court seat of retiring Justice David Souter. The front-runner candidates, Solicitor General Elena Kagan and appeals court judges Sonia Sotomayor and Diane Wood, "are not moderates [nor] ... pragmatists. They are hard-left liberal judicial activists," according to memo authors Gary Marx, JCN's executive director, and the group's counsel Wendy Long. JCN rebukes the White House for "its willingness to appoint to high government posts nominees who have cheated on their taxes and have other ethical problems" and warns the president is "looking to rush through" a successor to Souter, who will step down when the current session of the Court adjourns in June. The predictable first blow against Obama's likely choices was pretty tame as these things go. Interest groups, such as JCN on the right and Alliance for Justice and People For the American Way on the left, are important players in Washington during the confirmation process of federal judges, especially appointments for justices to the high court.

Back in 1986, Sen. Sessions was a U.S. attorney from Alabama and himself a nominee being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee for a federal district judgeship. His hearings did not go well. People for the American Way, Alliance for Justice and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund led a concerted campaign against Sessions, citing allegations of racism, prompting then attorney general Ed Meese to decry the liberal organizations as "people whose tactics are reprehensible and who appear willing to smear anyone in order to advance their agenda." Two GOP senators, including Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, voted against Sessions for a 10-8 thumbs down tally.

Aided by interest groups on the right such as American Conservative Union and Independent Women's Forum, Specter reliably defended later conservative nominees when Clarence Thomas was selected as Associate Justice by the first President Bush and again, as committee chairman, when the second President Bush appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito as Chief and Associate Justices. Although the Pennsylvania senator will sit in the most junior Democrat's chair this time around, and despite his defection from the GOP, interest groups on the right, hoping to dissuade an old friend from a bad choice, will probably keep the newest Democratic senator in their Rolodexes.