Alito

Alito is exactly the kind of judge that conservatives wanted Bush to nominate in the first place — and he’s exactly the kind of judge that liberals didn’t want him to nominate.

Based on what I’ve read over the past few days, Judge Alito looks good to me, but then, I’m no expert on such matters. However, from a purely political perspective this nominee looks like a winner from every direction. The liberals will have to make up their mind whether they’re going to take their opposition all the way to a filibuster. If they do not, Alito will be easily confirmed — a good political outcome from my perspective. If they do take it to filibuster, then we’re going to have a rousing political battle which I think is almost certainly going to end up with the liberals backing down (a good outcome) or the “nuclear option” being taken, taking away the privilege of filibuster for Supreme Court nominees (also a good outcome). The only bad outcome, politically, would be if the liberals managed to filibuster successfully, without the nuclear option being taken — and it’s hard for me to imagine a way for them to pull that off.

So I’m quite happy with this nomination; count me as a firm supporter on this one, as opposed to being neutral on Harriet Miers. Again, this is from purely a political perspective, as I don’t know enough about Judge Alito to have an independent opinon of his qualifications for the job.