NYT: One Nominee, Two Very Different Portraits in a New Round of Ads
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: November 18, 2005
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 - The fight over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. spilled out from the Senate to the national airwaves Thursday as liberal and conservatives groups began running commercials presenting radically different images of the same judge.
A coalition of liberal groups began an advertising campaign portraying Judge Alito as a darling of conservatives like Patrick J. Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh. They asserted that he had condoned the strip-search of a 10-year-old girl, voted as a judge to ease safeguards against employment discrimination and advocated overturning Roe v. Wade.
Progress for America, a conservative group close to the White House, began a television campaign in which Judge Alito's former law clerks attest to his fairness and impartiality as a jurist.
Another conservative group, Committee for Justice, ran commercials accusing one of the liberal coalition's flagship groups, People for the American Way, of being out of the mainstream because it supports same-sex marriage, defends the right to burn the flag and opposes Internet pornography filters in public libraries.
Although the initial purchases for the next week amounted to only a few hundred thousand dollars from each side, the groups pledged to spend as much as needed over the two months leading up to the confirmation hearings....
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/politics/politicsspecial1/18confirm.html