What Is "Robertsism"?

Well, as has trickled out over the past week or so, it has these elements (so far):

*Judge Roberts opposes using the courts to decree institutionalized reverse-discrimination;

*Judge Roberts had a small role in preventing the judicial theft of a presidential election;

*Judge Roberts has a touch of Justice Scalia in him (via PL):

There was...the time he offered a snide analysis, in an internal White House memorandum, of a proposal from a member of the House, Elliott H. Levitas. After the Supreme Court struck down efforts by Congress to veto actions taken by the executive branch, Mr. Levitas, a Democrat from Georgia, proposed that the White House and Congress convene a "conference on power-sharing" to codify the duties of each branch of government.

Asked to comment on the congressman's proposal, Mr. Roberts mocked the idea, and him. "There already has, of course, been a 'Conference on Power Sharing,'" Mr. Roberts wrote in a memo to Mr. Fielding. "It took place in Philadelphia's Constitution Hall in 1787, and someone should tell Levitas about it and the 'report' it issued."

*Judge Roberts, in the case of "assisted suicide" (doubtless applicable to other hot-button social issues as well), has a properly limited view of the judiciary's role in deciding such matters, believing them better left to the people to decide through their elected representatives:

"I think it's important not to have too narrow a view of protecting personal rights," he said.

"The right that was protected in the assisted-suicide case was the right of the people through their legislatures to articulate their own views on the policies that should apply in those cases of terminating life, and not to have the court interfering in those policy decisions. That's an important right."

The above is apparently enough, all by itself, to send the Washington Post into a full-bore linear panic (also via CQ):

While it's dangerous to make judgments based on a quick and necessarily spotty reading of quarter-century-old documents, the picture that emerges from the first wave of papers, including a huge batch unveiled from Judge Roberts' tenure as an adviser to President Ronald Reagan's attorney general, shows a lawyer fully in tune with the staunchly conservative legal views of the Administration he was serving - and indeed, at times to the right of some of its leading conservative lawyers.

Those who fear or hope, depending on their political positions, that Judge Roberts might be a stealth nominee in the mold of Justice David H. Souter - a supposed conservative whose performance on the bench turned out to be far more moderate [i.e. liberal] than predicted - will find no support for such predictions in the papers that have emerged so far.

Well, that's it then. This guy's gotta go.

To the United States Supreme Court, that is.

If Senate Donks think they're bursting capillaries at John Bolton's recess appointment, they need to start pacing themselves better, because the reality of electoral defeat has only just begun to administer its singular agony.