Could Dems Be Confirmed Using Their Own Standards?

Here's a fun piece from Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics on the problems the Senate Dems would have if they were to have to submit to a confirmation process:

How Many Dems Could Be Confirmed?

After watching the wife of the nominee break down into tears yesterday evening at the treatment being given to her husband by Senate Democrats, it seems fair to ask: how many Democrats sitting on the Judiciary Committee could be confirmed using their own standards? How many of them could withstand the same sort of exhaustive examination and distortion of their own careers and records that's now being given to Sam Alito's?

The answer, just off the top of my head and without resorting to extensive research or digging through trash, is not very many:

Not Ted Kennedy: for obvious reasons.

Not Joe Biden: he has a plagiarism problem.

Not Dianne Feinstein: she's had a Guatemalan houskeeper issue, was fined $190,000 in 1992 for failing to properly report $3.5 million in campaign expenditures, and her husband runs a company that scored a $600 million Iraq war contract in 2003. Imagine what the Dems would do with this last one.

Not Charles Schumer: two of the people under his employ at the DSCC are currently being investigated for illegally obtaining Michael Steele's credit report last year. In 1983, Schumer narrowly escaped indictment for misusing state funds in his 1980 Congressional race. The U.S. Attorney in the case, Raymond J. Dearie, actually recommended that Schumer be indicted, but the Reagan Justice Department turned down the request citing "lack of jurisdiction."

Not Dick Durbin: he would never get around his pro-life past. Durbin is on the record in the 1980's saying that he "believed that Roe v. Wade was incorrectly decided" and that "the right to an abortion is not guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution."

That leaves Pat Leahy, Herb Kohl, and Russ Feingold as the only Democrats on the Judiciary Committee who - at least at first glance - might possibly be able to survive one of their own confirmation hearings. Three out of eight. That's it.

It makes what the Democrats are trying to do to Samuel Alito all that much more distasteful and highlights how partisan and out of control the whole process has become.

UPDATE: We're down to two. I missed Pat Leahy's 1987 resignation as Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee for leaking classified information to a reporter.

Follow those links - it's a real Dem hall of fame. Wouldn't it be fun to give them a little of their own medicine?

In another good RealClearPolitics piece, Bob Novak describes the Dems as "shooting blanks" at the nominee. Read it here.