By making the best of their meager case against Sotomayor, the Republicans signaled to Obama that they are ready to fight harder if he names to the bench other liberals less armored by their personal histories.Broder failed to notice, naturally, that the silly Charlie Browns in the Democratic party are the ones who held hands and sang bipartisan kumbaaya while the Republicans now laugh in their faces when the shoe is on the other foot. Roberts and Alito turned out to be hard core ideologues, which anyone with a pulse should have known. But Broder seems reluctant to acknowledge that fact, instead casting the two parties as hypocritical partisans.But the Democrats are clearly ready for that fight, fueled by their resentment of the two Bush appointees who have already moved the Supreme Court in a markedly more conservative direction. Chief Justice Roberts won 22 Democratic confirmation votes, not only with his obvious legal credentials but his bland assurances that he saw the job of a justice as akin to that of a baseball umpire -- enforcing the rules, not rewriting the rulebook.
One after another, Judiciary Committee Democrats told the Republicans: You fooled us once, but never again. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, for one, pointed to the long list of significant decisions on which Roberts and Alito have led or joined a 5-4 majority, overruling precedent and narrowing individual rights. "I do not believe that Supreme Court justices are merely umpires calling balls and strikes," Feinstein said. "I believe that they make the decisions of individuals who bring to the court their own experiences and philosophies" -- the very thing that Republicans say they worry about in Sotomayor's speeches.
Strip away all the rhetoric, and what you have left is a certainty that partisanship and deeply felt battles will continue to rage every time there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court.