O'Connor Flashbacks

Atrios has wandered down memory lane and come back with some twenty-four-year-old news blurbs from when Sandra Day O'Connor was nominated to be the first woman on the Supreme Court. They trigger quite the sense of deja vu. One of the blurbs in particular features Richard Viguerie entering the fray to keep O'Connor off the Court. Sounds a bit like his threat this time around, doesn't it? I don't remember if conservatives came around as a result of O'Connor's Senate hearings or remained unhappy, but it's pretty clear that things didn't work out the way Viguerie intended. I think he's more powerful now than he was then. At that point, the conservative movement was just feeling itself out, seeing what muscles it could flex. It was still an open question as to how much of the first Reagan victory was a mandate for his right-wing policies and how much was just an anti-Carter vote. Now the conservative machinery is well-honed and practiced. Viguerie may still have a lot of bluster in his talk, but he's got a lot more to back it up with now.