Michael Pollak
In the course of bashing Miers, many conservatives have said that they hate stealth candidates, and they want someone with a clear record that would reassure them, like Scalia or Thomas.
Am I wrong, or wasn't Thomas the original stealth candidate? I seem to remember there not only being no paper trail on abortion, but him saying with a straight face that he'd never had a conversation on the topic in his life, not even as an undergraduate.
He was also the most unqualified candidate I'd ever seen, his judicial experience being purely nominal. And now he's the right's hero, arguably the most reactionary guy on the court. But none of them see any parallels to Miers. It makes me wonder if I'm misremembering.
Michael
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Well, Thomas wasn't really a "stealth" candidate - his politics and credentials were pretty clear, notwithstanding his professed ignorance of the abortion debate. As I recall, it was widely assumed that Thomas would team up with Scalia to form a solid 1-2 for the right, as Brennan and Marshall had for "left." That's pretty much what happened. The deranged right now wants a real, fire-breathing Christian Reconstructionist to replace O'Connor; hence their complaints about Meirs.