The Liberal Fight Against--Souter!

David Skinner has a super-duper excellent piece on David Souter's nomination fight in 1990. You should read it right away. And you should subscribe to The Weekly Standard (not that this site is affiliated with it in any way).

But since Skinner's piece is available only to Standard subscribers, here's the general gist:

When President Bush nominated David Souter in 1990, the liberal establishment went to battle stations. Key quotes:

"Almost Neanderthal" is how Molly Yard, then-president of the National Organization for Women, described Souter, whose "constitutional views are based on the 'original intent' of the Framers 200 years ago, when blacks were slaves and women were property of their husbands." . . .

"David Souter would be the fifth vote" for outlawing abortion, said Eleanor Smeal of the Fund for the Feminist Majority. "We find him a devastating threat." . . .

"What record Souter has compiled on constitutional questions is both sparse and disturbing," said Arthur Kropp, then-president of People for the American Way, whose current president Ralph Neas, then of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, questioned Souter's "commitment to constitutional guarantees of individual rights and liberties. . . . " The NAACP was "troubled" . . .

Souter, or course, has proved to be a reliably liberal voice on the Court. Skinner's point is that when the president announces his nominee this week and the left begins its doomsaying, you might want to take it with a grain of salt.