Can You Know What "Mainstream" Means When A Klansman Is Your Conscience?

I'd say no:

In the wake of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement, mostly unrepentant liberals -- along with a few conservatives who should know better -- rushed to brand the cowgirl a "mainstream conservative" or to demand a "mainstream conservative" nominee. They included Ralph Neas, Alan Colmes, George Will, and Senators Orrin Hatch, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, Dianne Feinstein, John Cornyn, and Barack Obama. What does this pattern mean?

If history is any guide, political contests over judicial nominees are rarely genuine jurisprudence debates. They're waged over labels. The use of "mainstream conservative," and its more odious ancestor "mainstream," opens up yet another front in the fight over the judiciary: the battle over language. When Ralph Neas, chief Borker and President of People for the American Way, terms Anthony Kennedy a "mainstream conservative," something's up.

No talking point shows the genesis of "mainstream" or "mainstream conservative." Yet its prevalence is undeniable. Even Gwen Ifill, PBS's Washington Week moderator, noted on a Washingtonpost.com chat last week that Democrats were applying the latter label to O'Connor.

And well before the current Court vacancy, "mainstream" was the liberals' favorite verbal weapon. It was universally used to tar Judge Robert H. Bork in 1987. His sin? His views were "out of the mainstream" of judicial thought. Opponents of William Rehnquist's becoming Chief Justice (among them Neas) wielded it in his 1986 hearings. Frustrated with the term, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) turned it on Rehnquist's critics, "The accusers of Justice Rehnquist are themselves out of the mainstream of American values."

Politicians parroted the line during the judiciary fights this past winter and spring. Sen. Ted Kennedy, in his March 31 dedication speech for the John Adams Courthouse in Boston, denounced "radical, ideological individuals whose views are outside the mainstream of judicial thought." Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton similarly warned against nominees outside the "mainstream."

When pressed, Democrats are cagey about what "mainstream" actually means. In the July 4 Washington Post, Ted Kennedy emphasized that "picking from a list of mainstream lawyers and judges" is a consensus project. Feinstein told Fox News Sunday on July 3 that a mainstream conservative is "someone that really speaks for the great bulk of Americans."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was about as far from mainstream as any judge seated on the Court in the past generation. Recommending banning Mother's Day and Father's Day is about as far from Main Street America as one can get, even in the Cobalt Blue State circles Ginsburg ran in.

For Bork to have been as far to the right as she was to the left, he'd have to advocate reinstalling the Articles of Confederation.

Neither the Senate Democrats nor the Left Wing Media have any clue as to where the mainstream is in America. They avoid it religiously (whoops, I mean "completely"---wouldn't want to offend Teddy Kennedy by establishing religion in the blogosphere, now).