I don't think he's necessarily insincere with the "I'm an institutionalist trying to protect the Court's reputation" bit. He thinks that's what he's doing. Thing is, that's a political goal. It's public opinion. And he is really, really bad at it. He has all the political aptitude of a two by four.

His ideology is at cross purposes with his politics on court legitimacy and public opinion. And he thinks his ideology is popular.

I think sometimes about him scrapping mandatory Medicaid expansion in the ACA but keeping the individual mandate. It makes no sense from a pure law perspective, it’s all his attempt at horse trading. But he did it backwards! Killing the mandate and keeping Medicaid expansion was much better policy.

"area man passionate defender of what he thinks the supreme court's institutional interests are"

he's making a strong case that all SCOTUS appointees should have to win some sort of elected position before being appointed. HOA board members have better political instincts than this guy.

He thought his immunity opinion, also his Section 3 per curiam and his attempt to half-ass Dobbs, would play well and we'd all see what a reasonable moderate he is calmly defusing the hot-button case. And he thinks that because he is clueless at this game. He's not even good at intra-Court politics.