Matthew Yglesias and Ezra Klein are upset with the Washington Post editorial page. Here’s Yglesias:

The Washington Post endorsed the confirmation of John Roberts. The Washington Post endorsed the confirmation of Samuel Alito. Now, The Washington Post has gone an excoriated the recent spate of 5-4 decisions in which Roberts and Alito, predictably, joined with fellow conservatives William Rehnquist [Yglesias means Anthony Kennedy], Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas to do the sort of things that conservative judges do.

One wishes, at this point, that the Post would simply endorse the decisions as well.

And here’s Klein:

Imagine if the dining section of the Washington Post had an editorial page. And on that page, they weighed in on both the quality of restaurants, but also the hiring processes of kitchens. And let’s assume, finally, that the page repeatedly endorsed cooks who promised to make dishes the Washington Post didn’t like, and then the Post repeatedly wrote editorials condemning those dishes, and the direction of the restaurant, and the state of dining today. Wouldn’t that seem…weird?

And yet, it would almost be less weird were the stakes actually confined to a satisfying meal, rather than the direction of the Supreme Court…

However, it’s worth thinking the issue through more deeply. As the agenda-setter in Supreme Court nominations, President Bush gets to choose who the Senate votes on. Even if one nominee gets rejected, Bush picks the next one. And he would never nominate anyone to the left of Anthony Kennedy, who became the de facto median justice after Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement. What this means is that Kennedy was going to be the pivotal vote on the Court no matter what (and indeed he has been). Hence the debate focused more on qualifications and judicial temperament — dimensions on which the case that the Post made for Alito and Roberts was not necessarily implausible (remember, Bush first chose Harriet Miers as his nominee for the seat eventually filled by Alito).