E.J. Dionne: Conservatives Dodging Debate on Alito

From the Washington Post:

When conservatives revolted against President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, they proudly proclaimed their desire for a big debate over constitutional principles. Now they are running from the fight.

No, they are not giving up on Samuel "I am and always have been a conservative" Alito. They just want to act as if their ardent support for Alito has nothing to do with his ideas or how he might rule. Whatever Alito said in the past that proves conservatives are right in seeing him as a comrade in arms is supposed to be irrelevant to the Senate's debate over his confirmation.

Alito seems, really and truly, to believe that Roe was a mistake. In his now famous letter seeking a promotion during the Reagan years, Alito said that he was proud of his work in the administration advancing arguments "that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."

Believing that Roe was wrongly decided is a perfectly respectable position. Many, perhaps most, conservatives hold this view. So do some liberal supporters of abortion rights.

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You would think that Alito and his supporters would welcome a principled discussion of Roe. In fact, they want to change the subject. When Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked Alito about that letter seeking a promotion, she said he told her: "First of all, it was different then. . . . I was an advocate seeking a job. It was a political job. And that was 1985."

Rather than defend his letter, in other words, Alito preferred to leave the impression that he might have been engaging in a bit of opportunism. Does that mean that 20 years from now, he will say that his statements to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were simply those of an appeals court judge seeking a promotion and were never intended to be taken too seriously?

Alito's supporters also tried hard to minimize the importance of the Roe strategy memo. Steve Schmidt, the White House official who is managing the Alito confirmation, said reading the memo as an indication of "how he would rule as a Supreme Court justice" is "a fairly absurd proposition."

When it comes to having an argument about abortion, the administration's strategy is to cut and run.

My Comments:
Republicans must play offense, rather than defense, with this nomination, or they (and we) will surely lose.

It cannot be allowed to become a "settled" principle of Supreme Court nominations that anti-Roe and/or pro-life nominees are disqualified from serving.