Kausfiles has a very interesting observation (that's what Kausfiles is for) about the spin that Adam Nagourney in the New York Times put on the Alito hearings just before they started.
Chief Cocoon-Spinner Back On Job: If you read Adam "Caterpillar" Nagourney in the NYT on Tuesday, you'd think Alito was in big trouble due to mounting GOP political difficulties and a galvanized Dem minority:
The different tone on display on Capitol Hill on Monday - and what it suggests for the hearings that are expected to dominate Washington this week - stood as evidence to just how much the political atmosphere has changed since the Judiciary Committee approved Chief Justice Roberts's nomination 13 to 5. . . .
Even in the course of Monday's swift-paced hearings, Democrats were ticking off at a dizzying pace issues they intended to press, suggesting that they expected to have a much easier time pinning down Judge Alito than they did Chief Justice Roberts. [Emph. added]
Look out, Sam! ... Two days later, does this passage seem eerily prescient or embarrassingly, cocooningly, wrong? ...
Cocooning is a Kausism for using reason and evidence to isolate oneself and one's readers from reality. I have noted that Nagourney quickly changed his tune as the hearings were under way. Now this from Tom Curry at MSNBC:
As the interrogation of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito ended Thursday he was not just four days closer to confirmation than he’d been at the start of this week, but the momentum had shifted markedly in his favor.
Groups working to defeat Alito were naturally not agreeing with the notion that he is likely to win confirmation.
But during his hours of testimony, the nominee had not given his foes one damning sound bite to use in the anti-Alito TV ads that will run next week.
Curry sums up the situation:
Over the past 35 years, Senate Democrats — sometimes aided by liberal and centrist Republicans — have mounted massive campaigns to try to defeat seven Supreme Court nominees appointed by four different Republican presidents.
The Democrats have defeated three of those seven: Clement Haynesworth in 1969, Harrold Carswell, in 1970, and Bork in 1987. They came close to defeating Clarence Thomas in 1991.
At this moment it looks as if they will fall short on Alito.
Some galvanized Democratic minority. It is significant that Alito, much more than Roberts, was a movement conservative with a clear paper trail. If Democrats do not attempt to filibuster, and I predict they will not, then the filibuster has been defanged.
Recent Comments