I think this kind of grandstanding is more likely to backfire on them than anything else. Sure, they're appealing to the hardcore Bush-haters, but to everyone else it just seems like they're letting partisan politics interfere with the business of governing. If they were deliberately positioning themselves to alienate the people who voted for Bush in the first place, they couldn't do a better job.

And, really, what'd the rationale for voting not to confirm Roberts? No one is arguing that he doesn't know the law, just that they can't pin him down to openly express his personal opinion - and since ideally a justice should base his decisions on the law rather than his opinion, that doesn't seem like a bad thing. We certainly didn't know where Ginsburg or Souter stood when they were confirmed.

Roberts is nowhere near the kind of ultra-conservative boogeyman that a lot of people expected Bush to appoint. He's amazingly moderate, and doesn't give off any kind of "company man" kind of vibe. He's still being vehemently opposed, however, and it seems like the opposition is primarily due to who nominated him. Given all that, what kind of percentage is there now in nominating another moderate for O'Connor's seat? If the long knives came out like this for Roberts, there's not much extra left that can be done if he nominates someone like Ashcroft - and it'll be easier to dismiss the deserved opposition as partisan manuevering because of the example set during Roberts's hearings.

In all, I think the Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot so often that all the Republicans have to do is sit back and watch.

Okay, I wasn't clear on what was going on. :)) And I wasn't all that clear when I was typing, as I could've said all that I meant much more simply if I'd just boiled it down to "I think the Democrats have gotten to the point of just automatically disagreeing with anything that Bush says, and defining themselves in opposition of an outgoing president is going to hurt them, badly." Hindsight's 20/20, and sometimes so is the editorial process. :))