RALPH G. NEAS

He is the president of People for the American Way and until recently, I only knew him by name. His appearance on Hardball has turned me into a big fan. Here are some excerpts:

NEAS: Number one, Justice Sunday several months ago was one of the most disturbing incidents in recent American history. It was truly religious McCarthyism at its worst. Unfounded allegations about people who were trying to defeat the nuclear option and save the filibuster were accused of discriminating people of faith. It was reprehensible. The charges of Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council are false and inflammatory. And by the way, over the last 55 years, there have been 21 Supreme Court nominations. Fifteen of the 21, 70 percent have been Republican. Seven of the last nine have been Republican appointees. And the two Democrats were approved after consulting with Senator Orrin Hatch. We have had a conservative court that Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council are attacking.
They even want to impeach Anthony Kennedy and they call Sandra Day O‘Connor a betrayal to conservativism. That proves how extreme Tony Perkins is.

NEAS: I‘m not sure how it cuts. It certainly limits his options. I think he was considering a slate of candidates. But what we have said is that we want a compromise candidate. We like this consultation, we hope it is real and leads to a consensus; someone in the mold of Sandra Day O‘Connor, who obviously disagreed with us a lot, but was unpredictable and a solid mainstream conservative.
Someone in the mold of Scalia and Thomas, someone that Tony Perkins wants, and I think George W. Bush has promised Tony Perkins and the radical religious right someone in the mold of Thomas and Scalia, would overturn more than 100 Supreme Court precedents going back to the 1930s. This is a fight over judicial philosophy.

GREGORY: . or so you argue. We don‘t know that.

NEAS: No, no. We have done a study of every dissent and concurring opinion of Scalia and Thomas going back to 1991 and 1986 respectively. With one or two more like-minded justices, more than 100 Supreme Court precedents would be overturned, affecting privacy, affecting equal opportunity, the environment, and many other things.