Democrats Smear Alito: What's the Point?

Why do they do it? Why are national politicians like Senators Kennedy and Schumer descending to cheap attacks and witness baiting in the hearings to confirm Judge Samuel A. Alito to a seat on the United States Supreme Court? Are they crazy?

It is common in political controversy to represent the other side as idiots. Private people often call politicians they disagree with as fools.

But this is a mistake. Politicians are not fools, even if they often act like it. National politicians like Kennedy and Schumer, who led the attack on Judge Alito in the confirmation hearings this week, are not fools. They are highly successful national politicians who have won state-wide campaigns time and time again. These are smart, successful people.

So why do they turn the Alito confirmation hearings into a playground brawl?

Is it because it worked in the Bork hearings, and almost worked in the Thomas hearings? That’s what Rush Limbaugh suggests when he says that Democrats are calling plays out of a 30-year-old playbook. It worked in the past, and so the Democrats will keep using it until the Republicans intercept a couple of passes for touchdowns.

Is it because the Democrats want to keep their base on a permanent war footing? That seems to have been their tactics ever since the election of 2000. But you wonder whether that is really paying off for them. When you keep your base on a war footing, it also keeps the opposing base on a war footing. Democrats are enraging Republicans just as much as they are encouraging their Daily Kos and MoveOn.org enthusiasts.

Are they just going through the motions for the left-wing groups like People for the American Way and the Alliance for Justice? Ralph Neas and Nan Aron run these liberal activist groups for what appears to be the sole purpose of promoting liberal judges for the federal bench and opposing conservative judges. But surely the Democratic senators have the power to say to Neas and Aron: cool it.

You have to hope that the Democrats are looking at polls that show that their slash-and-burn tactics are backfiring.

You’d like the tactics to backfire because you’d like to live in an America where a judicial candidate could tell the Senate Judiciary Committee: “Yes, Senator. I’m a pretty conservative guy: Two kids, two cars. One wife. But I’m not going to go onto the Supreme Court and reverse every liberal court decision of the past 50 years. That’s just not the way the law works.”

Senator Biden complained this week that the confirmation hearings were turning into a sham where the nominee wouldn’t tell the senators anything about his views. Well, senator, that couldn’t be because Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, ever since the Bork hearing in 1987, have tried to lynch any nominee that expresses a political view that liberals dislike, could it?