Alito's Organizations
Sam Alito doesn't seem to have been much of a joiner; on his 1985 job application he listed only two organizations of which he had been a member, the Federalist Society, in which he was active, and the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, in which he was not. Rich Lowry makes some excellent points about these two organizations, and the rise of conservatism:
A conservative with intellectual or public-policy interests in the late 1970s surveyed a bleak environment. The universities, the law schools, the federal government and the courts were held by the left.But then, the values Alito had grown up with struck back with Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. What was most important was not that conservatives had gained power, but what they did with it. The Reagan Justice Department set out to grow the counterestablishment. It identified bright young conservatives and prepared them for bigger things. It hired Alito, then got him a gig as a U.S. attorney, knowing that might prepare the ground for becoming a judge.
Twenty years later, he is about to assume a seat on the Supreme Court. Part of what so offended conservatives about President Bush’s initial nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers was that it bypassed the counterestablishment that had been built so painstakingly. [Ed.: Paul and I made this argument in an op-ed in the Washington Post.] As Stanley Kurtz of the Hudson Institute has argued, Alito’s pick signals a shift in the nomination strategy of Republican presidents. No longer do they need unremarkable “stealth candidates,” but they can go with nominees from the growing ranks of credentialed conservatives, because Alito shows that talent and intelligence are the most formidable weapons.
*** The work of the Federalist Society and others in honing conservative constitutionalist arguments through the years has been indispensable. There is no substitute for intellectual rigor, which some early conservative counterestablishment outfits didn’t have. The publication of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton seems to have aimed to vent and repel as much as to argue and convince. But conservatives came to realize that the crucial thing wasn’t to get even with the liberal establishment, but to get better — smarter, more qualified, more persuasive.
At the Alito hearings, it is now liberal senators who flail wildly and convince no one.
UPDATE: Night before last, I was awakened by the howling of coyotes. It was a sign, I think, that the Wile E. Coyote Democrats had returned. Were they destined to walk over the cliff? I don't know, but they did. All the while, waving a sign that says "Genius." These guys--Biden, Schumer, Leahy, Feinstein, even Kennedy!--actually think they're smart. And, since they're Senators, no one contradicts them. It's fun to watch.
