The SCOTUS and Roe VS Wade

Unfortunately, some wars are won by the side that is the most
fanatical in the religious sense. The victorious leaders harness the
holy energy of collective insanity.

COGITOR KWYNA

[From the Machine Crusade by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson]

As Jazz has reported below and the WAPO reports here, Bush Selects Alito for Supreme Court. So what does it all mean? We have this from Adam C over at RedState.org:

Judge Alito is ordinary in a good way. He is a Circuit Court of Appeals Judge for the 3rd Circuit. He has served 15 years on that Court and is well-regarded there. He has served as an assistant to the Solicitor General and as Deputy Assistant Attorney General. His resume reads like many other current Supreme Court Justices who have been picked off of Circuit Courts. Judge Alito's unanimous confirmation in 1990 shows that he is in the mainstream of legal philosophies. Similar to Chief Justice Roberts, Judge Alito is an ordinary pick for the Supreme Court.
Thus it should not be surprising that Senator Graham of the "gang of 14" is already pointing out that if Democrats filibuster Judge Alito "the filibuster will not stand." I expect similar statements from Senator's Warner, DeWine, and possibly McCain. I see no way that those 4 Republicans will allow a filibuster on such a highly qualified, well-respected nominee. They are all "gangsters" themselves. This means that unless there is some new skeleton or scandal, Judge Alito will receive an up or down vote as he should. All Senators are free to exercise their ability to advise and consent with a "no" vote and it is possible (although unlikely) that Judge Alito could be voted down, but he will not be filibustered. Because Judge Alito is ordinary.

I think for the most part this is probably all true. But we have this from the comments section of the above post.

Here's the political problem: With Alito's dissent in Casey dems are simply going to cast this as an up or down vote on Roe. That's what Republicans have tried to avoid for over twenty years.
They do so with good reason: Overturning Roe gets a plurality in exactly one state: Utah. The rest of the country, while possibly uneasy with it, basically wants the issue to stay settled. Republicans get a lot of Pro-choice votes in the suburbs and therefore have tried to send a mixed message to voters. On the one hand they say "we're the pro-life party committed to overturn Roe" on the other they say "but that's never going to happen." The latter part of that message is in danger here and will create political opportunity for dems.

A battle over Alito will force endangered moderates like Lincoln Chafee (who was endorsed by NARAL) to either vote against him, or lose his seat.

I wrote the following over at Running Scared in response to the Miers nomination and it still applies:

....the Corporatist wing of the republican party does not want Roe VS Wade overturned. Let's be honest here, we can talk about fixed elections and a poor campaign effort by both Gore and Kerry but there is one reason George W. Bush sits in the White House now. It's Roe VS Wade. This is where the quote at the top of this post comes into play; "The victorious leaders harness the holy energy of collective insanity". That pretty well describes the religious right in this country. The Corporatist Republicans cannot win on their agenda and they know it. Lee Attwater was the first to recognize this "collective insanity" and harness it. His gnomish student, Karl Rove, built on it. Once Roe VS Wade is overturned the fuel for that "collective insanity" is gone and the bus loads of evangelicals will no longer show up at the polls.

The Republicans now find themselves between a rock and a hard place. The evangelicals see this as the moment they have been waiting for, a time for the promises of the last 25 years to be fulfilled. If Republicans fulfill the promise the evangelicals will start voting their economic interests again or simply not vote at all. At the same time the Republicans will lose the middle; remember a majority of American support Roe VS wade.

[.....]

The Democrats are not without their own Roe VS Wade problems. As a said earlier they are out of power largely as a result of it. While a majority of Americans support Roe VS Wade the religious collective insanity is not there to bring people to the polls or make it a the sole reason to vote for a candidate.

The Rethuglicans have supported the overturn of Roe VS Wade with a wink and a nod to those who support it, thinking it would not be overturned. If it is indeed overturned the religious fanaticism of the Radical Christian right will be lost and the majority of Americans who support the right to choose will be alienated.

This doesn't mean that the nomination of Alito shouldn't be fought but fighting the fight should not be based on Roe VS Wade. If he is indeed a fascist in the mold of Scalia that is the evidence that should be presented. Bill in DC refers us to this example over at The New Republic Online.

Samuel Alito Jr., 54. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Known as "Scalito," or little Scalia, he is considered less blustering than the big guy, but liberals will undoubtedly balk at his abortion record. In 1991, he dissented from a decision to strike down Pennsylvania's spousal notification provision--a decision the Supreme Court later upheld in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the decision that reaffirmed Roe v. Wade. What should be far more troubling to Senate Democrats, however, is Alito's 1996 dissent from a decision upholding the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting the possession of machine guns. Applying the logic of the Constitution in Exile for all it's worth, Alito insisted that the private possession of machine guns was not an economic activity, and there was no empirical evidence that private gun possession increased violent crime in a way that substantially affected commerce--therefore, Congress has no right to regulate it. Alito's colleagues criticized him for requiring "Congress or the Executive to play Show and Tell with the federal courts at the peril of invalidation of a Congressional statute." His lack of deference to Congress is unsettling.

--Michael Crowley