Who knows who he chose...
Don’t sell O’Connor short...she helped Bush in Bush v Gore
With GOP control of the Senate, Reagan could have gotten two Scalia-quality judges confirmed. He could have made his diversity pick later.
O’Connor is what happens when a Republican makes a puzzling campaign promise to make a diversity-based Sup Court pick. Why did he do that? Why make a promise seemingly designed to appeal to people (leftists) who were never going to vote for him?
Like Kennedy, O’Connor got some things right. But she was also part of the majority that saved Roe and that sanctioned the use of racial preferences. She also developed an insufferably smug attitude about judges and criticism of them.
And while it was correct to stop the Florida Sup Court from trying to allow Gore to streal the election, in hindsight perhaps a Gore win wouldn’t have been so bad...if he had been a one-term President. All else being equal, there wouldn’t have been any Sup Court vacancies until after 2004, and maybe a more competent Republican than Bush would have defeated Gore in 2004, and maybe that competency could have avoided the disastrous final part of Bush’s presidency that helped elect Obama. That may be too much to wonder about I know. The media would have tried to blame any Republican for Katrina, and the economic collapse had been set in motion years earlier by the diversity-worshiping zeal of both parties to increase minority home ownership, credit standards be damned.