That's all I'm saying. You hose yourself -- the Republicans have done this at least three times that I know of, going back to Nixon's appointees -- playing games and nominating "young and vigorous" (i.e., "I want at least 40 years outta this guy") persons who are not on the Court to CJ, versus going with a known quantity for CJ.
Elevate someone like Estrada or Gonzales or Brown, and he could turn into the next Souter -- and then you're screwed, doubly so, because you passed up two rock-solid men already on the Court to nominate the less-known quantity!
One of the things that bother me is the liberal litmus tests. In the case of Luttig his fathers killer was executed therefore the litmus test is the death penalty. The ever expanding litmus test will continue to get out of hand.
If someone like Ted Olson were nominated the litmus test would be the fact that his wife was killed in the 9/11 attack so he couldn't be trusted to deal with terrorists fairly.
I meant, the GOP's been disappointed with the subsequent voting records of at least three of their nominees for AJ, not CJ. The point being, you may be buying yourself a nasty surprise by nominating an outsider to be the new Chief Justice when Rehnquist steps down. The case in point par excellence being Earl Warren, former Republican governor of California, who was rewarded with the Chief Justice seat for throwing the presidential nomination to Eisenhower (and thus screwing the conservatives, who wanted Bob Taft of Ohio), who was the candidate of the Old Money and their New York lawyers, as described by Theodore White in his The Making of the President books.
This would be a good place to repeat my misgivings about Brown's depth or sincerity of support for the Second Amendment and RKBA, having voted on one such case on the appellate bench in California, in which she identified the issues and then turned aside from addressing an obvious incubus on 2A rights and instead went on to cast her vote based on other issues. The party appealing to his 2A rights lost.
See #3.