"Little Scalia"

Fortunately, no one ever really believed that "uniter, not a divider" stuff anyway.

It was never a realistic expectation that Bush would appoint a "swing vote" Justice to replace O'Conner. And in Samuel "Scalito" Alito, he's given his right-wing base the nominee they want, and the bloody confirmation war they crave.

And it will be bloody. Bush's 39% approval ratings can't include many Americans outside his ultraloyalist base. But the current Republican leadership has never been bothered by fiddly details like not having the votes, not when they can simply crack skulls.

An Associate Justice Alito would probably tip the majority against Roe v. Wade, of course, and in general he'd be bad news for civil rights and individual liberties. (You can read the People for the American Way profile of him in .pdf format here.)

But Christian conservatives are only part of the Rove "base." They're the part that votes, but the rest of the names in Karl's speed-dialer are all corporations. And they supply the money and write the laws.

Without minimizing the importance of privacy and establishment issues, where Alito would have a profound effect, there's another angle to consider: What would his confirmation mean for corporate power in America? (Hint: Checked your pension lately?) The fan dance of disclosure on Miers and Roberts, centering around the code-word litmus tests on Roe, obscured the importance of this area of influence. Here's a prelminary rundown of related issues from his many opinions.

(Postscript: The timing of the announcement this morning is a bank-shot, of course, hoping for the added effect of distracting the media from indictments current and future in the Fitzpatrick investigation. The Dems seem determined not to let that happen. That's good. Now we'll see if the news media can focus on more than one thing at a time.)