[sharkhawk]

Actually Souter was nominated by GHWB. Sununu talked Poppy into it because he had no paper trail and could not be slammed like Bork for actually being an intellectual conservative. Bush I was assured that Souter was a conservative, but there was no nagging proof of that in the records.

[BlackElk]

I would like to believe that Bush the Elder was fooled but I do not believe that. I noticed that Souter's televised hearings on his SCOTUS nomination showed him being surrounded by long-time Concord, New Hampshire, leftist pseudo-Republican Mayor Malcolm MacLaine and Malcolm's wife long-time leftist pseudo-Republican Susan MacLaine. Some talking head observed that the MacLaines had sponsored Souter somehow for his Rhode Scolarship sojorn at Oxford.

Suffice it to say that the MacLaines make Lincoln Chaffee look like a Bircher. The guy who must have been fooled was the wonderful New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thompson who made Souter NH Attorney General in which the little termite played at being a conservative for public consumption. If I know this, having lived long in Connecticut but not New Hampshire, the Bush the Elder knew it through the New Hampshire plitical grapevine. He certainly knew who the MacLaines are/were.

It also suggests that Sununu the Elder was an absolute phony as a conservative because he had been governor of New Hampshire while Malcolm was Concord mayor and Susan was a state senator.