[Warning: the following comment is full of tangential thinking and its corresponding rabbit trails, and has only the slightest bearing on this specific post.]

I take a different tack on this whole thing. It’s a given that Alito is different than O’Connor, so pointing out those differences, with a view to showing people that the makeup of the court is going to change, is rather impotent (at least in the case of people who think like myself). Of course he’s different - that’s why the Right clamored for someone like him (as opposed to Miers). The question isn’t (or at least, it shouldn’t be) whether or not he and O’Connor would have voted the same way; the question is, which one of them is more in line with the governing document of the nation?

In that situation (which I admittedly haven’t looked into too much yet), it’s not what Alito says vs. what O’Connor said, but what they both said vs. what the Constitution says. Legal experts (left wing and right) have bemoaned the unConstitutionality of the Roe v. Wade decision, for instance, opposing it not because of the principle issue that it decided, but because of the way that it was decided. (On this tangent, the Wall Street Journal had an interesting analysis of what would happen in the event that RvW was overturned by SCOTUS - namely that individual states would then decide to make abortion legal or illegal for their jurisdictions, and that the Right would have neither the rallying political issue or the ability to outlaw the practice en total; so they basically lose by winning). So William Saletan’s piece on Alito’s legal views toward women, while informative, ultimately has little bearing on the issue at hand. Whether or not you agree with O’Connor or Alito on the morality of an issue, the point is (and has always been): what does the Constitution say about how that issue should be decided?

It’s also interesting (and I know you haven’t made this argument, but it just occurred to me that I’ve heard it implied elsewhere - especially in Saletan’s column - and that train of thought wants to leap to the page now) that so many of us pundits are wringing (or rubbing) our hands together over this pick, as if we were worried that the content of SCOTUS won’t represent the will of the people at large. The problem with this thinking is that the SCOTUS was never intended to be representative of the people - which is precisely why they are picked in the manner that they are (that is, appointed, not elected). That’s actually the whole point: to have a restraint against the full exercise of democracy (which is precisely what de Tocqueville was so wrapped up in when he paid his famously insightful visit those two hundred years ago - tyranny of the majority, and all that).

Anyway, there’s more to this issue (and in my head) that wants to be discussed, but I’ve rambled on far too long already, so I’ll waste your time no longer.

Austin