There may be two other issues at play in the lack of Republican opposition to Breyer (and perhaps even Ginsburg). First, I think many conservatives at that point still believed that Souter would be a conservative, if only in the mold of someone like Justice Kennedy. Thus, many conservatives may have held a false security that the Court was moving in their direction anyway. In a similar vein, the prior two appointments to the Court had arguably moved the Court to the right with the replacements of Thurgood Marshall with Clarence Thomas and William Brennan with David Souter. Thus, perhaps conservatives did not believe, at least with respect to Ginsburg, that she would move the Court median at all.

Second, I believe that Orrin Hatch’s close consultation with President Clinton on Justices Ginsburg and Breyer played an enormous role in the acceptability of both to Republican senators. According to Jan Crawford Greenburg, Hatch essentially told Clinton that both Breyer and Ginsburg would be acceptable choices. I have learned through my own empirical research that senatorial consultation is extremely important to the confirmation of judges at all levels of the judiciary. Incidentally, I think that a vote on Harriet Miers might have been very similar to the lopsided votes on Breyer and Ginsburg because Harry Reid had already deemed Miers an acceptable choice once she was nominated.

And to Kent I say that there is always the possibility that Republicans are just more collegial on judicial appointments. Indeed, I would like to say that as a conservative. But I just don’t think that that is the case, especially since the confirmation rates for Bill Clinton’s circuit court nominees were actually lower than for George W. Bush’s, at least to this point in his administration.

I’m not sure what you mean by “the Median Justice’s points of view” and so, no, I do not agree to that.

My point earlier in the thread was that if one insists on placing people on a simplistic right-left scale, the origin must be the median American voter, i.e., the person who had a hard time choosing between Bush and Gore in 2000. Whether a person is “centrist” or “extreme” must be measured in terms of absolute value of distance from that origin.

Yes, there were more ideological choices that both President Clinton and President Bush could have made, which is exactly what I said in comment 5, above.

“Shall I discuss the Federalist Society….” If you like, but I don’t see why. Alito’s connection with the FedSoc is considerably less than Ginsburg’s with the ACLU, and the ACLU is further from the political center by a wide margin.

To be sure, there are decent people in both parties, and there are people with no sense of decency in both parties. My observation, for what it is worth, is that the latter seem to be more influential within the party on the Democratic side, with the likes of Daily Kos and PFAW being treated as if they are worthy of respect.

I very much appreciate your comment, but I avoided your line of inquiry because I think that it probably begs the question. Both sides have been pointing fingers at the other claiming that the real blame lies with the reprehensible actions of the opposition party. And I completely agree with you that the confirmation battles of Justices Roberts and Alito were nastier than those of Justices Ginsburg and Breyer.

But I view that as more a sign of the times and as a symptom of the increasing politicization of the appointments process. I have little doubt, for instance, that the next appointee by a Democratic President (assuming that it is an ideological appointee) will face as tough of a confirmation battle as either Roberts and Alito did. The question, at least in my mind, is why has this happened?

From what point do measure the “center” Roger? Obviously not the logical point of the American median voter. Do you measure “right” and “left” relative to yourself? Only on some idiosyncratic scale could one say that Ginsburg is closer to the center than Alito.

President Bush did indeed pass on the more ideological possibilities when he chose Roberts and Alito, very much the same as President Clinton did in choosing Ginsburg and Breyer. In those terms, the nominations were mirror images, yet the confirmation battles were very different. Anyone seeking to explain how confirmation has changed needs to address that asymmetry.

What’s to figure out? People with no sense of decency are now in greater positions of influence on the left side of the aisle. That is why nominations made by Republican presidents are more contentious, and involve more sliming, than in the past or when nominations are made by Democratic presidents.

The confirmation process for Justices Ginsburg and Breyer was less acrimonious overall than for the nominees of Republican presidents before and since. To the best of my knowledge, nothing like the Estrada trash incident (pp. 14-15 of the essay) has occurred related to a Democratic nominee.