In a rational world, it would be impossible for Alito to be confirmed. He can't be confirmed if he fails to satisfy (or provide adequate political cover for) the Brownback Caucus, and he can't be confirmed if he fails to satisfy (or provide adequate political cover for) pro-choice moderates. In a rational world, there's no way he could do both--especially now that he's on the record with an opinion about Roe v. Wade. Alito has been telling Democratic senators that opinion is no longer operative:
Kennedy said Alito told him he is older and wiser now with "a better grasp and understanding of constitutional rights and liberties."but of course that's hardly going to warm the hearts of Dobson and his cohort. Alito's dilemma is that he needs pro-choice senators to believe his disavowal, and he needs the wingnuts to believe he's lying.
So what's happening? To all appearances, pretty much exactly that.
Feinstein appears to be satisfied. Kennedy is more skeptical, but then Alito doesn't need Kennedy. And on the right...nothing. If anyone is reacting negatively to Alito's backpedaling, I haven't seen it (not from the most prominent wingnuts, and not from the right-wing blogs). It's as if as far as they're concerned, he never said anything at all.
It's a willing suspension of disbelief.
People like Feinstein are so disturbed by the prospect of an ugly nomination fight that they eagerly accept any rationalization, no matter how lame, that allows them to avoid conflict. The wingnuts seem to be focusing not on Alito's backpedaling but on the criticism that forced him to it, adopting (in effect) the position that anyone so poorly treated by People for the American Way must be somebody we want on the Supreme Court. Everybody sees what they want to see.
Ultimately, what makes this possible is the absence of any broadly accepted reality in this country--or, to put it another way, the existence of an alternative reality with an alternative epistemology based on assuming the correctness of right wing ideology and finding (or inventing) the facts to support it. (And yes, there is something of a parallel effort on the left; but liberals, on the whole, are still much more tethered to the idea that there are objective truths independent of ideology.) In a world of objective truth, Alito has to be one thing or the other--determined to overturn Roe v. Wade, or willing to let it stand--and either possibility has to alienate people he can't afford to alienate. In a world of competing ideological realities, Alito can have it both ways; the comments that appease the moderates simply don't exist in the reality where they could damage his chances.
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