Once the "Scalito" business settles down, it will be interesting to see what the so-called "talking points" against Judge Alito turn out to be -- and how well they'll resonate with voters (and, of course, Democratic senators).

Whether he has an inside line to Democratic strategy or whether's he's just prescient, Dick Polman has a pretty good knack for issue spotting. Right now he's leaning towards abortion and guns:

....Democrats, goaded by liberal interest groups, may nevertheless decide that Alito's conservative ideology warrants a filibuster. (In 1991, Alito said that wives should be required to notify their spouses before having an abortion; in 1996, he tried to curb Congress' power to ban possession of machine guns.)

I can just see the cartoons.

Remember, the best "talking points" are those things most easily reduced to a graphic stereotype that any idiot can understand. Most people are not going to spend their time reading Alito's dissent in U.S. v. Rybar in which he interpreted the Commerce Clause strictly, and didn't (gasp) display hostility to the Second Amendment.

The details are here (Alito dissented because he did not think that "the purely intrastate possession of machine guns, by facilitating the commission of certain crimes," had "a substantial effect on interstate commerce.")

But I really doubt the type of person who'd be persuaded by a cartoon of a machinegun-waving judge would read Alito's dissent.

The abortion issue is of course more complicated. As Orin Kerr points out, the "talking points" focus is on Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which conveniently avoids focusing on another case -- in which Alito concurred with "striking down New Jersey's partial birth abortion statute." (Links via InstaPundit.)

If anything, such a record provides better fuel for activist pro-lifers against Alito than activist pro-choicers against him.

Notwithstanding the "talking points" will focus on Casey. On this, liberal pundit Polman and conservative blogger Patterico would seem to agree:

Democrats will, of course, distort Judge Alito’s dissent. They will say: "Judge Alito thinks that women should have to consult with their husbands before having an abortion. Evidently he views married women as nothing more than their husbands’ property. Also, he is insensitive to the fact that battered women aren’t going to get an abortion if they have to tell their husbands about it first. If Judge Alito is confirmed, the right of married women to obtain abortions will be severely restricted.”

If I didn't know any better, I'd swear that Alito's willingness to defer to the Pennsylvania legislature and sustain the provision is being seen as, well, judicial activism! Certainly, it will be spun as if the guy was deliberately advocating judicial interventionism in order to "turn back the clock" on women's rights. (Men, of course, have no rights and nothing to say about the fate of babies they've helped create. Only responsibilities! I'm only surprised they're not also compelled to pay for the abortions they're not allowed to be told were to be performed. Regardless of whether abortion should be legal, doesn't even an impregnated egg have two parents?)

Lost in all of this will be Alito's actual reasoning, which is accurately reflected by his statement that "whether the legislature’s approach represents sound public policy is not a question for us to decide."

I think part of the problem is that activists see everything as activism -- especially anything that might threaten gains achieved by activism. Thus, if Alito defers to the legislature about spousal notification, he's a male supremacist actively trying to overrule Roe v. Wade. And if he opines that the Commerce Clause doesn't extend to intrastate possession of a gun, he's a machinegun waving activist.

Well, I long ago learned that if you don't want to be called an activist, you must never disagree with an activist. That's because if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

UPDATE: According to Bill Frist, in 1990, a Democrat-controlled Senate unanimously confirmed Judge Alito as a circuit judge -- a fact identified by Dick Polman as one of the Republican "talking points."

Hmmm....

But wouldn't that make the Democrats who voted to confirm Alito part of the problem?