January 11, 2006
By By Ronald Brownstein
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - Democrats resembled a guerrilla army searching for a weak point in a heavily guarded fortress Tuesday as they challenged Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. at his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing.
The array of issues Democrats raised reflected the breadth of their concerns about the record of Alito, President Bush's choice to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. But the broad nature of their critique also underscored the party's difficulty at coalescing around a single, clear argument against Alito's nomination.
The long day of testimony did not produce a dramatic or emotional confrontation that flustered Alito, a judge on the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. But the persistent and sometimes relentless questioning from Democrats signaled that the party might mount a more forceful resistance to his nomination than it did to Bush's choice last year of John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice.
With Republicans holding 55 Senate seats, Alito remains a strong favorite to succeed O'Connor. But based on the sometimes contentious back-and-forth between Alito and Democrats on Tuesday, the process may not be as smooth or predictable as it was for Roberts, who won confirmation from the full Senate with a commanding 78-22 vote.
"With Roberts, there was an air of inevitability from the very beginning," said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, a liberal coalition opposing Alito. "This situation is completely different."
As Democrats repeatedly confronted Alito and Republicans defended him the hearing covered issues as varied as executive power, abortion, reapportionment and the nominee's ethics.
Because Alito has served as a federal appellate judge for 15 years, the questioning focused more on his specific decisions than on the intangible issues of judicial philosophy that consumed much of the hearing for Roberts, who had served about two years as a federal judge before his nomination.
"It makes it a different kind of hearing, because he's got 15 years for everybody to see," said Wendy Long, general counsel for the Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative group supporting Alito. "He is somebody who is a known quantity to everybody."
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