Replies

I always tagged him as a Sandra Day O'Connor type judge, and IMO I nailed it and that hasn't changed. Like Gors, O'Connor voted with Rehnquist 95% of the time her first 3 years on the court, leaving many conservatives to prematurely declare she was a female Rehnquist clone (they had even dated in law school) and high five each other for Reagan's "accomplishment" of naming a staunch "strict constructionist" as the first female justice.

. Then, O'Connor began issuing a handful of WTF rulings on social issues, and it turned out she simply had a leftist streak on many social policies, although she was an otherwise conservative Republican and had been for many years. It wasn't like her views "evolved" on the court or she was a closet commie, she was merely a 70-80% conservative when we needed a 95% one.

Some FReeper posted a graph lately of the current SCOTUS ideological leaning, and it had Gorsuch/Kav/Roberts grouped closely together, as right-of-center justices. I think that's pretty accurate. They all have more in common with each other than any have with Scalia, though none of them are horrible John Paul Stevens/Earl Warren activist leftists in GOP drag, no matter how often FReepers lash out at Roberts and curse out Bush for appointing.

The real wild card where the jury is stil out on is Barrett. So far she's been very disappointing and less conservative than I anticipated. We better pray she steps up and shows vast improvement or Trump will be 0-3 in SCOTUS appointees

Ah, found the "ideological spectrum" graph from another thread. Thanks to FReeper Doodlebob for sharing. I think this study is pretty accurate! The ONLY big surprise for me here was apparently the "wise latina" voted noticeably to the LEFT of liberal icon/evil man-hating feminazi Darth Bader Ginsburg.