[RummyChick]

You dont know who that.picking justices is somewhat of a crapshoot.

I dont know if there were many dissents here when Roberts was picked. I remember mostly positive posts

[Wallace T.]

There is a tendency for Supreme Court justices to become enveloped in the Washington "swamp", much like Senators and Congressmen. The cliché is that they "grow" in their position. Scalia, Alito, and Thomas resisted this tendency.

Currently, there are 52 Senators who identify as Republicans. Let's say that Trump nominates a staunch conservative, especially one, like Napolitano, who is a high profile originalist. It is a given that the 47 Democrats, plus Bernie Sanders, will oppose the nomination. However, unlike the replacement of Scalia with Gorsuch, a replacement will change the ideological balance of the Supreme Court. If Ginsburg or Kennedy retire, voluntarily or not, a Napolitano type relationship will change the ideology rightward. In this case, will the likes of Murkowski, McCain, Graham, etc., get a bout of "conscience" and oppose the nomination? If the enemy can pull off just three RINOs, the nomination will fail.

[Cboldt]

-- I dont know if there were many dissents here when Roberts was picked. I remember mostly positive posts --

You remeber right. There was some concern, because Roberts appeared to have deliberately left no tracks with which to judge his leaning. But that concern was out of the mainstream.

[subterfuge]

Roberts seemed like a conservative next to the lady Bush tried to6appoint, Harriet Myers.