Many Democrats stressed that argument in their first reaction to Alito. Still, the selection could present Democrats with largely the same challenge they confronted with Roberts: generating decisive resistance to a nominee solely on ideological grounds.
Even critics such as Neas acknowledge that no one will question Alito's credentials, which include degrees from Princeton and Yale, experience as a U.S. attorney and seven years in the Reagan administration's Justice Department.
Nominees have sometimes been stymied by charges that they were too ideological, such as conservative Robert H. Bork in 1987. But the inability of opponents to inspire much opposition to Roberts suggests that without a controversy over ethics or qualifications, engaging the public in a full-scale battle over a Supreme Court nominee isn't as easy as many in Washington expected.
Polls by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People and the Press have found that, since Bork's nomination, most Americans have not paid close attention to any Supreme Court confirmation except Thomas' -- which produced explosive charges of sexual harassment. And in opinion surveys this year, about one-third of Americans expressed concern that Bush's nominees were moving the federal courts too far to the right.
Neas and other critics predict it will be easier to fan public resistance to Alito than those numbers suggest, because his record includes controversial decisions in so many areas -- such as abortion and gun control -- and his confirmation as O'Connor's successor could so palpably shift the court's balance to the right.
"If confirmed," Neas said, "Samuel Alito could literally be a walking constitutional amendment undoing precedents that go back to the 1930s."
But one Republican strategist, who asked not to be named when discussing White House thinking on the nomination, said Alito's genial personal manner and rhetorical restraint in his opinions would make it tougher than opponents expected to convert him into the sort of lightning rod that Bork became.
"Democrats won't light a firestorm in the country, and they won't light a firestorm in the Senate," the strategist said.
