The first day of hearings are complete and we didn’t really have any surprises. Members of both parties said what they were expected to say and for the most part they remained reasonably civil. Republicans were careful to strike a balance between satisfying the desire of their base for a thorough review of the nominee and avoiding going too far in their rhetoric.
Democrats were careful to strike their own balance between sounding like they wanted to just rubber stamp the nominee and not giving the opposition too much ammunition. I think in some ways it might be a harder road for the Democrats to strike at this point but the GOP needs to be very careful not to go too far. In either case it seems that baring some major revelation the nomination will be approved.
The media of course is having a lot of fun trying to make something out of what was a fairly quiet day. The one pro life protester who was tossed out is fodder for the left trying to make everyone sound extreme. At the same time the right is trying to parse as many comments as possible to make Sotomayor some sort of stealth radical.
Perhaps the most amusing comment I’ve seen so far came from MSNBC and Ed Shultz in his observations on the comments by South Carolina Senator Graham. Graham pointed out that if he’d made a comment akin to the now infamous wise Latina remark that his career would be over. Shultz responded by denying Graham’s assertions and stating that Graham should remember that ‘the good guys won last year’
Now perhaps Mr. Shultz lives in a different world than I do but does he really expect us to believe that if a white Republican talked about being a ‘wise white man’ that he wouldn’t be tossed out on his ear ? Or for that matter if a conservative media host talked about ‘the good guys winning’ that he wouldn’t be condemned for calling the left the bad guys ?
But that’s a fairly minor bump in an otherwise quiet day.