Prediction: GOP Will Use SCOTUS Pick to Rally Troops

According to Politico, conservatives are “itching for a fight.”   Gary Bauer, former presidential candidate and head of the conservative group “American Values,” offers a “the other side does it, too” defense.

“The other side does not agonize about whether they are going to give a Republican Supreme Court nominee a difficult time, they just do it.”

Conservatives remember Sen. Ted Kennedy’s ferocious attack on “Robert Bork’s America,” the pubic-hair-on-the-Coke-can humiliations visited upon Clarence Thomas and the way that Samuel Alito’s wife cried after Sen. Lindsey Graham recounted the Democrats’ charges against her husband.

The tears of Martha-Ann Alito during tough questioning of her husband were used by Republicans to paint Democrats as bullies, and they will once again play that for all it’s worth when Obama has a nominee before the senate. But the truth is that it wasn’t the Democrats who made Mrs. Alito tear up, but rather the kindness shown her by Lindsey Graham.

Those who watched Wednesday’s session point out that the immediate trigger for Martha-Ann’s tears was not Democrats questioning Alito, but Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) coming to his defense.

“Are you really a closet bigot?” Graham asked.

“I’m not any kind of bigot,” Alito said. “I’m not.”

“Of course you’re not,” Graham said.

This is a crucial point, says Savannah Guthrie, a Court TV correspondent who’s been covering the hearings, because it goes to the origin of tears. It’s not perceived cruelty that got to Alito’s wife. It’s the opposite.

“She’s crying because Lindsey Graham showed her some kindness,” Guthrie said.

And conservatives will oppose any Obama nominee for being “liberal.”  They’ll have to be reminded about all the times Republicans warned that their nominees should be decided purely on qualifications, not on ideology.  Expect a big, fat fight, no matter what Obama does.  Republicans will use the process of fighting an Obama nominee as a way to unite their increasingly fractious party.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.