Robert Idlett's column, "Stop Alito on Filibuster," on November 21st reminded me of one of my favorite songs by the Eagles: Get Over It. One of the song's lines offers advice to liberals who oppose the appointment of qualified judges to the Supreme Court: "Get over it. All this bitchin' and moanin' and pitchin' a fit, get over it."
I had a tough time making sense of the column because the title implied that Idlett was aiming to critique nominee Sam Alito. But when I searched through the substance of the editorial for fact-based objections to Alito's confirmation to the Court, what I found were petty, knee-jerk buzzwords. Apparently, Alito is anti-choice, anti-civil rights, anti-union, anti-this, anti-that, anti-happiness, anti-puppies... readers of this column may have come away with the impression that Alito is the Antichrist, all the worse, according to Idlett, because Alito is a white man. And those were the few lines of the editorial that actually talked about Alito.
Much, much more of the Idlett's piece editorial tries to impugn Alito via an assortment of prominent conservative figures such as Ronald Reagan, Rick Santorum and, open your history books, Barry Goldwater. Reagan was the president who nominated the first woman to the Supreme Court, Santorum is a senator who among other things has been praised for his advocacy of animal rights, and Goldwater, far from "campaign[ing] against minorities' rights," as Idlett claimed, was actually the co-founder of the Arizona NAACP. As beneficial as it may be for Alito to be associated with these figures it is silly to judge Alito by the actions of other people.
Instead of by other conservatives, by his ethnic background or by his gender, Alito should be judged by his record, which shows his fair interpretation of the Constitution and legal precedent on both sides of the political aisle. Alito was a practicing lawyer for fourteen years and has been a federal judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals for fifteen. Perhaps the most telling example of Alito's dedication to balanced justice is his ruling in the case Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey v. Farmer. Altio found that a ban on partial-birth abortions was unconstitutional. In three out of four rulings pretaining to the subject, Alito supported abortion! Despite any legitimate personal objections to the idea of abortion, Alito did his job and formed his decision based on legal precedent. Alito is a good example for liberals who claim to stay true to their ideological claims of open-mindedness.
The day Justice Sandra O'Connor announced her resignation from the Court, an uproar of objection was heard from the far left side of the aisle, promising a huge legal battle to summarily oppose whoever it was that Bush nominated. Luckily, John Roberts was articulate and qualified enough to leave Senate Democrats without any sensible reason to oppose his nomination. But the minute Chief Justice Rehnquist passed, the far left at it again. Before Alito's name was anywhere near the press, liberal activist groups and their Congressional consorts had already pledged to fight to next nominee. This automatically confrontational attitude represents the true nature of liberal objections to Alito's nomination: they have nothing to do with Alito.
Democrats in the Senate have two choices before them. Will they continue to let the original platform of their ideology devolve from enlightened open-mindedness into a reflexive contempt of values-minded nominees for office? Or will they make a show of the bipartisan unity that they so commonly invoke?
I'm sorry Bush won (I'm really not), but he isn't going away and he isn't going to nominate another leftie like Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the court. Bush has nominated a qualified judge who will interpret the Constitution fairly and accurately. If liberals see that as a problem, they have only one choice: get over it.
William Keegan Gibson is a sophomore in the School of International Service.
