GOP O’Connor criticism rings false

WASHINGTON – The ruckus touched off between the Reagan White House and the new right by the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Arizona Court of Appeals Judge Sandra Day O’Connor is a tempest in a teapot. Even so, it’s a sign of tensions that could play a key role in the politics of the early 1980s. There will be no great fight. Mrs. O’Connor embodies all of the Republican virtues – affluence, tennis, the presidency of the Junior League of Phoenix, a husband who belongs to the World Affairs Council of Phoenix and serves as president of the Phoenix-Scottsdale United Way. Judge O’Connor herself is also a former ma• jority leader of the Arizona Senate. Democrats have breathed a sigh of relief: The Reagan revolution does not extend to the Supreme Court. The new right is angry, though, predicating its anger on Mrs. O’Connor’s alleged softness on the abortion and Equal Rights Amendment issues. Tactically at least, they have a point. Although the New Right doesn’t have a prayer of defeating Mrs. O’Connor’s nomination, she is so clearly not one of them, so clearly an establishment Republican, that if they don’t skirmish on the nomination, they signal weakness – and they are too skilled a group of politicians to do that. So what they will do is “Mau-Mau” the issue: Yell a lot, make a lot of noise, shake their fists, brandish a few weapons, but not mount a knockdown fight. This Mau-Mauing should make clear to the administration that the new right feels aggrieved, and that new and additional