Samuel Alito Confirmation Vote

Strata-Sphere has called for a RINO Stampede on the subject of Alito's confirmation.



Dick Durbin has said he'll filibuster.



Professor Bainbridge was first out of the box with an item saying he doesn't want the "nuclear option" used.



I agree.



Why?



Alito went through the tough part - and he came off as looking professional, reasoned, judicious, and supremely qualified. His detractors did not.



On high profile nationally televised hearings, this man demonstrated he's more fit to be making top level decisions than his detractors.



Go ahead and filibuster him. Make the President's day. Make Karl Rove's week. Make the RNC's entire campaign season. Because I guarantee that the average voter is going to be repelled by these tactics. On October 27, I wrote:

Best guess and best hope: One thing a lot of people don't understand about President Bush is that he's got cojones. The president will find a severely qualified conservative jurist smart enough to understand the politically generated hell they are going to go through in confirmation, and loyal enough to stick it out to the end even if the nomination appears doomed. The point is that's the only way to get some control of the confirmation process back, by naming someone who possesses the obvious qualifications to be on the court who is nonetheless subjected to something that makes what happened to Robert Bork downright friendly. Even if the Donkeys win that vote, they lose politically. If they lose it, they break even - both sides are energized, the Donkeys by the loss, the Elephants by what the Donkeys did to this poor person who is obviously qualified for the post.

If the Donkeys want 2006 to be the year the Elephants take control of Congress in the way that the Donkeys did at their peak (280 in house, maybe 60 in senate), they should be all means continue pandering to the hard-liners.



The average voter agrees that Alito deserves a thumbs up, or at least a vote. Furthermore, filibusters have an association with the civil rights filibusters of the sixties.



Something else: No virtual filibuster. Make the Donkeys stand up there and talk in open Senate about what an extremist Alito is, while everybody who wants to can put up video or transcripts of what was said and what was done. We know who will come off looking like extremists, and it's not Alito. He's got liberals who worked for him defending his integrity. He's got older judges with impeccable liberal credentials defending him as qualified and mainstream. There are fifteen years of his decisions as a judge, and the Donkeys have nothing to show him as out of the mainstream.



(The Donkeys really should be more careful in their choice of tactics. Alito is much closer to mainstream thought than either of Clinton's two nominees. If the Elephants want to stop future Ginsberg-type nominations cold, they've got all the ammunition they need)



When the gang of 14 first announced itself, I thought it was the a Bad Thing. But by October, I knew I was wrong. The Coalition of the Chillin' was right. Given their history, I doubt that the Donkeys on the gang of fourteen can justify Alito being "extraordinary circumstances" and "out of the mainstream" without torpedoing anybody whom that sort of pandering appeals to (i.e. the hard left) would find acceptable. So by voting to filibuster, they would be defeating themselves, and the whole purpose of the gang of fourteen was that they're not that stupidly partisan.