Senate Dems Setting Themselves Up for Trouble

Two more Senate Dems announced their opposition to Judge Sam Alito:

Two Democrats who supported Chief Justice John Roberts said Thursday they would oppose Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, reducing the number of confirmation votes the conservative judge will get next week.

He is expected to be confirmed, but with fewer votes than the 78 Roberts got in September.

Democratic Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Ken Salazar of Colorado both questioned whether Alito would be independent of President Bush and the executive branch in his future rulings.

I wonder if the Dems understand the potential snake pit they're about to fall into? For their sake, they better convince a few more Dems to vote for Alito, because if he is confirmed with less than 60 votes, the nutters on the far left are going to go completely bananas and the Dems will pay a high price from their own lefty activists.

The nutballs are already calling for a filibuster, which would be suicide for the Dems because they probably couldn't sustain it in light of the public polls which would show strong support for Alito. If they insisted on holding out, the GOP would quickly move to invoke the nuclear option, and the filibuster would be gone forever from the Dem anti-judicial nominee toolchest.

So far only one Dem has announced for Alito, so they better find four more Dems to ensure the victory total is 60 or more (assuming we don't have some soft-headed Republicans).

Of course, there is another problem for the Dems which may not come to pass for awhile. If God should avert his eyes and allow a Dem president while the GOP continues to run the Senate, that president can forget getting any liberal nominees through the Senate. The old rules about approving nominees based on their judicial qualifications alone are now dead and gone, and political philosophy will be front and center. You'll never see another Ruth Bader Ginsburg approved 93-7 by a GOP Senate.

Two can play the judicial political game.