Alito escapes

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jan 15, 2006

Mark Steyn on how the Dems fluffed the Alito Inquisition:

Even smear tactics require a certain plausibility. When you damn someone as a big scary mega-troubling racist misogynist homophobe and he seems to any rational observer perfectly non-scary and non-troubling, eventually you make yourself ridiculous. The boy who cried "Wolf!" at least took the precaution of doing so when there was no alleged predator in view. If he'd stood there crying "Wolf!" while pointing at a hamster, he'd have been led away for counseling. That's the stage the Senate Democrats are at.

As I'd hoped Alito would make a tough personal declaration against abortion and force the opposition to make the case in public, last week's events yielded an unsatisfying victory. It's nice to win by shut-out, less so when your own runs were walked in by feeble pitching.

From the other side of the aisle is an article in the New York Times discussing the Democratic wound-licking. I was wryly amused by the report of a "retreat" attended by 42 out of 50 Senate Dems in 2001. The retreat-masters were well chosen to help the retreatants reach deep inside themselves to re-connect with Their Core Value:

At the retreat, Democrats listened to a panel composed of Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, Cass R. Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School and Marcia D. Greenberger, the co-president of the National Women's Law Center. The panelists told them that the court was at a historic juncture and that the Bush White House was prepared to fill the courts with conservatives who deserved particularly strong scrutiny, participants said.

How was it known, four years in advance of their selection, that Bush's court picks would deserve strong scrutiny? Obviously not because of doubts about the worthiness of the picks themselves, but because -- as their Democratic spiritual directors reminded them -- there is but "one thing needful," namely, abortion-on-demand. The other problems are merely instrumental.