The Full Record

Cass Sunstein has studied Alito’s dissents systematically:

When they touch on issues that split people along political lines, Alito’s dissents show a remarkable pattern: They are almost uniformly conservative. In the overwhelming majority of cases, he has urged a more conservative position than that of his colleagues. In his dissents, at least, he has been a conservative’s conservative — not always in his reasoning, which tends to be modest, but in his ultimate conclusions.

So, while Orin Kerr’s anecdote is evidence against the argument (which, as far as I can tell, nobody is making) that every single one of his opinions has been conservative, that’s all it does. You could make the same argument about Clarence Thomas: there have been cases where I agree with him and disagree with the Court’s more liberal members. That’s doesn’t make it inaccurate to call him a conservative justice. Alito’s record, in total, is very conservative. And until he was nominated, there would have been nothing remotely controversial about this claim.