[Mb-civic] The masking of a conservative - Derrick Z. Jackson - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

The masking of a conservative

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist  |  November 23, 2005

PRIDE MUST go before he falls. This is why Samuel Alito hopped to 
liberal burrows on Capitol Hill to proclaim the burial of his 
conservative ideology. In his 1985 application to a senior post in the 
Reagan administration, Alito wrote:

''I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which 
the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic 
quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect 
a right to an abortion."

''I am and always have been a conservative and an adherent to the same 
philosophical views that I believe are central to this administration." 
He said, ''I believe very strongly in limited government" and ''the 
legitimacy of a government role in protecting traditional values."

''In college, I developed a deep interest in constitutional law, 
motivated in large part by disagreement with the Warren Court decisions."

The Warren Court of 1953-69 happened to be the one that expanded civil 
rights protections for millions of Americans frozen out of the 
Constitution until the 20th century. The revelation of the memo forced 
Alito to bizarrely ask liberal senators not to strictly interpret his 
strict interpretations.

Last week Alito visited the prochoice senator from California, Diane 
Feinstein. Feinstein said Alito told her, ''I'm not an advocate; I don't 
give heed to my personal views." The whipping boy of the right, Senator 
Ted Kennedy, said Alito told him that the 1985 memo is just an old job 
application and that the nominee said he is ''wiser" and has ''a better 
grasp of understanding constitutional rights and liberties."

This genuflection seemed to dampen outright outrage. Feinstein, the only 
woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said after her meeting that she 
thought Alito's response was ''very sincere" and ''absolutely truthful." 
Moderate prochoice Republican women such as Senator Olympia Snowe of 
Maine said after her meeting with Alito that the nominee claimed ''an 
enormous respect for precedent," the buzz phrase for the 1973 Roe v. 
Wade decision upholding abortion rights.

But Snowe also said she had not made up her mind because Alito ''didn't 
repudiate what he said" in 1985.

And the right wing is still cheering. ''This man is a conservative. He's 
been a conservative all his life," Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of 
Georgia said after his meeting with Alito last week. It is instructive 
to note that in 1998, when Chambliss was a member of the House, he voted 
to eliminate affirmative action in college admissions. In November of 
2002, Chambliss, then the chairman of a House antiterrorism panel, said 
the best way to combat terrorism was to have a Georgia sheriff ''arrest 
every Muslim that comes across the state line."

Chambliss said he was only joking, but the crowd he spoke to laughed 
with him. His support of Alito makes that 1985 memo all the more serious 
for the nomination hearings. Alito's pride in trying to turn back the 
clock fit right in with the Reagan White House, which boasted even 
louder about it.

Reagan's 1980 campaign was marked by his states-rights speech in 
Philadelphia, Miss., which lauded the bigoted actor John Wayne and said 
nothing about the civil rights workers who had been murdered there. In 
office, he tried to grant tax exemptions to segregationist Bob Jones 
University and hired a Cabinet dedicated to getting rid of affirmative 
action, abortion, and the wall between church and state. He coddled 
apartheid in South Africa, and his idea of diversity was embodied in 
Interior Secretary James Watts's boast that he had a black, a woman, two 
Jews, and a cripple.

On one occasion, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Reagan was 
''proud" of his record on civil rights. Reagan himself said in 1985, 
''We have a proud record on civil rights." That same year, Alito applied 
with pride for his promotion. In that application, Alito also claimed 
membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which called 
coeducation a ''fad" that ''ruined the mystique and the camaraderies 
that used to exist." It complained of ''subpar applicants being admitted 
primarily because they belonged to minority groups" and more students 
showing ''weak character."

A nominee so willing to prostrate himself to an administration that left 
virtually nothing to be proud of on civil rights is a solid warning that 
if Alito gets on the court, he will have no shame exhuming the ideology 
he claims has been buried.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/23/the_masking_of_a_conservative/
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