How Alito Looks Under the Lens

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Activist groups have been filling their coffers for years in anticipation of just such a high-stakes face-off. Now, with the swing vote of retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor hanging in the balance, they have no intention of saving it for a rainy day. Soon after the choice of Alito was announced, the organization Progress for America launched a $425,000 one-week media campaign in support of the nominee. The liberal group People for the American Way is starting a slow rollout of its own spate of anti-Alito commercials, the fastest it has ever started a campaign after the selection of a new nominee. It expects to spend, along with its allies, several million dollars painting Alito as a right-wing judicial activist who will continue to chip away at or perhaps even overturn the right to an abortion; roll back civil rights and liberties, especially in the realms of race and gender discrimination and crime and punishment; and permit religion to encroach into the secular arena. In a moment of surprising candor, Alito provided new fodder for his critics last week, telling Senators that the high court may have gone too far in recent years in keeping the church out of public life.

Still, for the moment, most politicians and activists on the left are keeping their powder dry, trying their best to express reservations about Alito without lashing out and sounding shrill. Absent a number of Republican defections, the Democrats will be unable to block Alito unless they resort to a filibuster that will prolong debate and prevent a full vote. And if they go that route, many Republicans have vowed to pursue the "nuclear option"--using a simple majority to pass a rule ending filibusters for judicial nominations.

As remote a possibility as that scenario now seems, it is enough of a threat that the Bush Administration has taken an unprecedented approach to selling Alito. Instead of first focusing on potential liberal opponents on the Senate Judiciary Committee like Ted Kennedy and Joseph Biden, Alito made many of his initial courtesy calls on more moderate Democrats, some of whom are members of the Gang of 14. That coalition of Democrats and Republicans banded together to prevent an escalation to a filibuster--nuclear-option scenario during the battles over federal appeals-court nominees earlier this year, and they met last week to affirm their belief that only "extraordinary circumstances" would justify a judicial filibuster. If at least five Senators from relatively conservative so-called red states--like Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska--can be convinced that Alito is not outside the mainstream, the thinking goes, then any chance of a filibuster would be off the table.

THE ANTI-SCALIA?