HOW AND WHY SAMUEL ALITO HAPPENED - Yahoo! News By Richard Reeves / Mon Nov 7, 5:46 PM ET:
"The shame of and for the leadership of the Democratic Party over the past quarter-century is that they have been unable or unwilling to engage Republicans (and conservatives in general) in battles over ideas. Perhaps the conservatives running the country now are too ideological -- I certainly think that -- but since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Republicans have been the party of ideas. Democrats have been satisfied, foolishly, to focus on personalities rather than policies and programs.
Judge Alito, like the new chief justice, John Roberts, is one more example of the intellectual triumph of the right in American politics. They and other Ivy League conservatives, including Kenneth Starr and Theodore Olsen, who argued for the Republican Party before the Supreme Court that made George W. Bush president in 2000, were attracted to or recruited into the Justice Department in 1981 in a conscious effort to change legal ideas and the makeup of the federal judiciary."
