UGH, he was supposed to be a Thomas/Scalia and now he’s a Kennedy.
Not really, at the time of his nomination it was known that he was no originalist. He was said to be a “judicial minimalist”, which was supposed to mean that he liked narrow decisions, but it said nothing about his fidelity to the Constitution. The Bush Administration played a little trick on conservatives. They used a “judicial minimalist” argument to show that he wasn’t a judicial activist.
I read a post on another internet forum in which an apparently left-leaning person was relieved when he learned that John Roberts was nominated.