WHOM TO APPOINT

Terry Eastland says that, if Chief Justice Rehnquist steps down, President Bush should elevate Justice Antonin Scalia and then fill the vacant Associate position with a younger Scalia-like individual. While that would be my preference as well, it rather ignores an obvious point: absent an intervening election that both gives Bush a second term and brings the number of conservative Senators to 60, this is politically unfeasible. If the Senate Democrats are willing to filibuster lower court nominees, they’ll surely resist the takeover of the Supreme Court by principled conservatives.

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