Judge Samuel Alito is not the conservative many thought he would be on day 1. I have seen this too many times not to be surprised. The DC talking heads threw out Bush’s first nominee, Harriet Miers because some like David Frum had a personal vendetta to settle with her. They were convinced they knew better than Bush. And they were wrong – as usual:

New Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito split with the court’s conservative Wednesday night, refusing to let Missouri execute a death-row inmate contesting lethal injection.

Alito, handling his first case, sided with inmate Michael Taylor, who had won a stay from an appeals court earlier in the evening. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas supported lifting the stay, but Alito joined the remaining five members in turning down Missouri’s last-minute request to allow a midnight execution.

This is the Kennedy-Souter mistake where you let people like Bill Kristol dupe the party into believing they, and only they, know what a ‘true conservative’ is. I was not happy with the way elitists and talking heads pilloried Miers and her supporters without having a chance to hear her statements. I was on the fence – but I have no idea what Miers represented

But it was clear there was a lot of BS involved. Alito is a good man and will be a good justice. He just will not be what the conservative base was told he would be. Be prepared to be disappointed. I always am when I listen to Kristol and Frum.

UPDATE:

After reading some of the posts on this subject and the point made Alito was possibly not up on the details of the case (though most people in his position should be breifed and reviewing case documents for pending actions like this – or better yet abstain) I want to make clear that I am not judging Alito on this one action. But, I stand by my original concerns that he has been oversold to conservatives.

BTW, I think the action was probably the right action given the fact other cases were already stayed pending a determination of whether lethal injection is unconstitutional. What worries me is if lethal injection is deemed unconstitutional we may lose the death penalty in this country. How would that look? And nobody can blame Bush if Alito turns out not to be what we had hoped. We can blame the elite Republican opinion makers.