In a Jan. 31 NewsBusters post, Clay Waters peddles a favorite conservative distortion: that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was considered an unrepentant liberal at the time she was nominated for the Supreme Court.
Complaining that a New York Times article on newly confirmed Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito “emphasizes Alito’s conservatism again and again” (Waters seems to have a problem acknowledging the simple and uncontested fact that Alito is, in fact, conservative), Waters wrote that “the Times covered the Senate vote that made liberal former ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg a Supreme Court Justice.” Waters does not explain how being a “former ACLU lawyer” automatically makes one a “liberal.”
In hurling the “liberal” tar brush and dangling the ACLU bogeyman, Waters ignores Ginsburg’s record as a moderate on the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, where she served for 12 years after her ACLU stint, often voting with respected conservative judges as Kenneth Starr, Robert Bork and Laurence Silberman. Waters also ignores the fact that she was recommended to President Clinton by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch as a candidate whom Republicans would approve.
In perpetuating the distortion, Waters joins the likes of the Cato Institute’s David Boaz (whom Waters previously cited) and WorldNetDaily’s Les Kinsolving and Joseph Farah.