That’s the title of my new Confirmation Tales post, which I think you will find an interesting read. Some excerpts:
The nomination process for a Supreme Court seat often yields unexpected new nuggets of information about a candidate. The same piece of information can have dramatically different impact depending on when it surfaces. A fact that is learned during the president’s selection process might doom or damage a candidate’s prospect of being nominated. The very same fact, if it is discovered after the successful launch of a nomination, might have little or no impact or might even help the nominee win confirmation….
If it had been known in advance of his selection that Roberts had volunteered his formidable legal skills in support of the gay-rights plaintiffs in Romer, I think that it is highly unlikely that Bush ever would have nominated him. Indeed, if that information had surfaced at Roberts’s 2003 confirmation hearing on his D.C. Circuit nomination, I don’t see how Roberts would ever have made it on a short list for the Supreme Court….
The fact that the discovery of Roberts’s role in Romer came only after his nomination had been successfully launched changed everything.
I was a participant in daily coalition calls, and I can attest that the private response of many conservatives to the news ranged from disbelief to disappointment to despair. But the public response was much more muted….
Once everyone has already boarded the nomination ship and it has begun sailing to its destination, it’s not simply going to turn around and return to port. You can jump off the ship. But what will that achieve? Or you can try to organize a mutiny. But what are your prospects of success? And might you so severely damage the ship that, even if you could force it to return to port, it would be in bad shape for its next journey? The most sensible option is usually just to stay the course and hope for the best—and to work hard to avoid similar surprises on future nominations.
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