Reply #8: The thing with Souter is that Warren Rudman, a liberal Reoublican from NH, sold Bush on him.

[Jennicut]

"An opinion article by The Wall Street Journal some ten years after the Souter nomination called Souter a "liberal jurist" and said that Rudman took "pride in recounting how he sold Mr. Souter to gullible White House Chief of Staff John Sununu as a confirmable conservative. Then they both sold the judge to President Bush, who wanted above all else to avoid a confirmation battle." Rudman wrote in his memoir that he had "suspected all along" that Souter would not "overturn activist liberal precedents." Sununu later said that he had "a lot of disappointment" about Souter's positions on the court and would have preferred him to be more similar to Justice Antonin Scalia."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Souter

Souter was never a real conservative. At all. Bush was afraid of a Bork-type with a paper trail and Souter was not controversial. Bush got suckered in by a liberal Repub. Teddy Kennedy and John Kerry voted against him because he had friendships with other conservative politicians in New Hampshire. No one except Rudman knew that Souter was really a liberal Repub type (of which there are no more existing in the Republican party).