I'd like to say Steve Sweeney was smiling like the cat that ate the canary. But he looked more like a cat that ate an entire turkey, with stuffing and cranberry sauce on the side.

The Senate President was grinning because the governor had just handed him a complete and utter victory in a fight that started seven years ago this spring.

That fight was over the makeup of the state Supreme Court. Chris Christie ran for governor in 2009 promising to use his appointment power to remake that court, which is regarded by right-wingers as one of the most activist in the nation.

But the first justice to come up for reappointment happened to be from Sweeney's own Gloucester County. After the governor deep-sixed John Wallace, Sweeney declared war.

That war lasted till Monday, when Christie offered unconditional surrender to Sweeney and the South Jersey Democratic machine.

The capitulation came in the form of a decision by the governor to withdraw his nomination of a Republican Superior Court judge from Monmouth County for the one remaining open seat on the court. He substituted a Democratic lawyer from Union County, Walter Timpone, with an unusual penchant for donating thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates in Sweeney's back yard.

No wonder Sweeney was smiling. This was a big win for him as he goes into an expected fight for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination next year.

But it could be a big loss for Christie, and for the man he supports for president. That's Donald Trump. The minute the nomination was announced, the campaign of Trump's chief rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, pounced.

"Chris Christie is driving a dagger into the heart of the Republican Party right now," said Steve Lonegan.

Lonegan, the arch-conservative who gave Christie a good run in that 2009 primary, is now a top operative in the Cruz campaign. He said Christie's cave-in is indicative of how Trump would act on the pivotal issue of appointments.

"This is Donald Trump's No. 1 endorser in the country," said Lonegan. "Where does Trump stand on his guy in New Jersey appointing a liberal Democrat to the court?"

I suspect that's a question the Donald would duck. Christie's cave-in represents a rejection of the pledges he made to GOP voters in that primary against Lonegan and Christie's fellow Mendham resident Rick Merkt.

Merkt is a lawyer and former state Assemblyman who gave up his seat to run in that race against Christie. His obsession at the time was pinning Christie down on just what he would do with the four openings on the seven-member court that were to come up during the next governor's first term.

"That was the whole point of my campaign," Merkt recalled. "I said that if you wanted to change New Jersey, you had to change the Supreme Court."

This was clearly not a comfortable subject for Christie, who was then coming off a stint as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey and had lots of friends in the legal establishment.

It took a tag-team attack from Merkt and Lonegan to get Christie to commit to changing the court's direction.

Eventually Christie made grudging promises to clear the bench of activist judges. At one debate he declared "The same test will be applied to everybody: If you legislate from the bench, you will not be reappointed."

The big test on that came in Christie's second term, when he had a chance to fill a fifth seat on the court.

Steve Sweeney and Chris Christie: The Senate President outsmarted the governor at every turn in the fight over Supreme Court justices

He was faced with the choice of whether to reappoint Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, a Jon Corzine appointee who would be considered an activist by virtually all conservatives.

Despite his campaign promise,Christie reappointed Rabner for a term that runs till 2029. And there was not a single prominent conservative among the governor's other four appointments, Merkt said.

"In my opinion there is no difference in demeanor and tenor of the court than when Chris Christie became governor," he said.

That's my opinion, too. In fact a couple of the appointments seem to have moved the needle a bit to the left. One was the replacement of Hunterdon County's Helen Hoens, a solid conservative, with Lee Solomon of Camden County, a Republican former assemblyman with a liberal pedigree

But perhaps Christie's goal here was less ideological than geographical. Solomon has been known to be friendly with the Democratic machine run by South Jersey political boss George Norcross.

As for Timpone, more than $10,000 of his contributions went to U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, a Democrat who retired and bequeathed the seat to another Democrat, Donald Norcross, the brother of the boss.

This all comes in the midst of a fight over the future of Atlantic City that finds the South Jersey Democrats in the Senate battling the North Jersey Democrats led by Assembly Speaker Vince Prieto of Hudson County. Christie's backing Sweeney in that fight.

But the governor had reason to smile as well. Now he can concentrate on that June Republican primary in New Jersey and that July convention in Cleveland.

That has to be more fun than fighting with Sweeney.

PLUS: Here's a good National Review piece from 2014 in which the writer notes that conservatives were upset with Christie's court picks even back then:

"The national GOP's right flank is already looking to make Rabner's reappointment the weight that sinks Christie in the upcoming presidential primary. They say that a chief executive does nothing more important than appoint judges and that Christie, one of the strongest chief executives in the country, simply refused to expend political capital on judicial appointments."