Roberts = Souter, Kennedy, Rehnquist or Scalia?

Beldar has one of the more thoughtful analyses setting forth why conservatives should not worry that John Roberts will turn into another Souter: he worked in the Reagan-era White House Counsel's office and has been vouched for by Reagan and George H.W. Bush allies.

An excerpt from Beldar:

. . . through people like former Solicitor General Ken Starr (and, perhaps, Chief Justice Rehnquist?) with whom John Roberts has worked very closely, and through privileged documents that Judge Roberts must have written himself while a government lawyer, Dubya and his staff certainly know vastly more about Judge Roberts' character and core beliefs than, for example, Poppy Bush ever could have known about David Souter [an unknown appellate judge in New Hampshire -- TKM] or than the Gipper ever could have known about Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy. Instead, Dubya and his staff have the same kind of first-hand, pertinent, and highly reliable knowledge about John Roberts that Richard Nixon and his staff had about William Rehnquist. And that worked out pretty well over time, didn't it?

That makes me feel better -- I have no problem with obtaining another Rehnquist.

The notion that Pres. Bush may have come up short on the conservative-o-meter by selecting "another Rehnquist" instead of "another Scalia" as fingernails-on-the-chalkboard columnist Ann Coulter said is completely ludicrous. For those of you not paying attention: Rehnquist WAS "the Scalia" before Scalia. That is, from 1971-86 (his term as an Associate Justice), Rehnquist was easily the most conservative member of a Court that included a few moderate to solid conservatives in that time (Potter Stewart, Lewis Powell, Byron White, Warren Burger). Rehnquist and White were the two dissenters in Roe v. Wade. Rehnquist was not a flashy rhetorical street fighter like Scalia, but in dissent he would cut the majority's opinion to shreds with a scalpel instead of smashing it with a mallet.

Rehnquist has moderated but not that much -- he still consistently sides with Scalia and Thomas; his views are generally squarely within the mainstream of conservative jurisprudence; he consistently votes against abortion-rights positions and votes for tougher law enforcement, votes to uphold the death penalty, voted against that execrable campaign finance law, and decries the use of international law in US courts. In other words, adding Rehnquists to the Court is a GOOD THING for conservatives. This is especially true when you can trade another Rehnquist for Stevens-O'Connor-Kennedy-Souter-Ginsburg-Breyer. And guess what, we can.

Complaints that we might be getting another Rehnquist instead of another Scalia are simply foolish. The Borkanization of the process by the Democrats, combined with the squishiness of certain Republican Senators (Grassley, Collins, Lugar, Snowe, Graham, DeWine, Chafee) means that a hard-core white male Scalia, Jr. stood no chance of confirmation. Coulter wants to stick it to the Democrats, and that's a defensible desire but it doesn't make good policy. In lieu of another Scalia, I'll take another Rehnquist any day.