I plan to stay out of the Alito nomination talk because I have nothing to add to the conversation. Sure, I'm upset that the traitorous Team BushCo can nominate anyone to the Supreme Court. Beyond that I'm resigned to the fact that it's going to happen and that the nominee will be a disaster for women's reproductive rights, minorities, workers' rights, the environmen ... basically any leap forward made since 1937. The Dems won't block Alito because they're still keeping that powder dry for a really big fight. We are well and truly fucked.
That said, I am interested in the depths to which the GOP will stoop during the crucial media storm that started this morning. Carpetbagger caught Orrin Hatch setting the bar for poisonous rhetoric particularly high:
Of course, now that conservatives approve of the president's new nominee, they've come to play the bigot card all over again. Consider, for example, what Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told Fox News viewers this morning.
"[Democrats] think they own the Italian-American vote all up and down the East Coast. They don't, but they think they do. If they become offensive against somebody with the qualifications of Sam Alito, Judge Alito, then I think it's going to be held against them. They're going to have to be very careful how they handle this."
Hatch has been pulling this stunt for too damn long. I don't expect much from him, but this kind of crass identity politics is vile and Hatch surely knows it.
He also knows that there are no consequences for talk like that.
I'm afraid I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments, especially as expressed in the first paragraph, Robin! I have just read a few pieces in the NYT penned by such 'presstitutes' as Bumiller and Purdum and they have only confirmed what you say here.
And, yes, 'we are well and truly fucked', and not only in the US, I might add from down under!
Posted by: Helga Fremlin | October 31, 2005 at 06:38 PM