Townhall.com :: Columns :: A necessary debate by George Will:
"[...] One is so politically as well as intellectually untenable that they will try not to make it explicitly. It is that judicial conservatism may once have been a legitimate persuasion, but now is a disqualification for service on the Supreme Court.
To which there is a refuting question: Since when? Since 1986, when 98 senators -- including 47 Democrats -- voted to confirm Antonin Scalia 98-0? Since last December, when Harry Reid, leader of Senate Democrats, said that Scalia would be a fine nominee for chief justice? "
[...] Which brings us to the second disreputable argument Democrats will be reduced to making: Because Alito is more of a judicial conservative than was Sandra Day O'Connor, he is unacceptable because it is unacceptable to change the court's intellectual balance. This argument is triply flawed.
First, nowhere is that rule written. Second, the history of presidential practice -- Democrats should especially study FDR's sweeping alteration of the court's composition -- refutes the rule. Third, when in 1993 the Senate voted to confirm the very liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union, to the seat being vacated by the retirement of the conservative Byron White, 96 senators voted for her, including 25 Democrats still serving in the Senate. Including Reid. Including Pat Leahy, Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, Dianne Feinstein, Herbert Kohl and Russ Feingold, all members of today's Judiciary Committee. [...]
