Bush To Dems: Boo!

Cohen: Alito's Nomination Sets The Stage For A Nasty Fight

(CBS) 
In fact, the Alito nomination is so secure with the President's base that both he and Alito spent virtually no time during their "introduction" Monday morning talking about the judge's judicial philosophy. Alito's supporters already know his philosophy and so do his detractors. It's those in the middle who are going to be targeted between now and the end of year.

From the White House, then, expect the focus of this nomination to continue to be upon Judge Alito's marvelous life story, his long dedication to public service, his career as a successful prosecutor and then as member of the solicitor general's office.

The idea will be to personalize and humanize Alito, to give context to the sinister caricature that his opponents will shape of him, in order to reassure people outside of Washington that the judge is not a nasty jurist like Justice Antonin Scalia, the guy everyone thinks of when they think of Alito.

Alito no doubt will help this effort. Unlike Scalia, he is affable and likely to charm many of the Senators he now has to meet and greet.

From Senate Democrats, meanwhile, expect the focus to be upon Judge Alito's voting record, the argument that he is too ideologically conservative to get the top job, and the idea that he is no suitable replacement for the moderately conservative Justice O'Connor.

This argument posits that while the William Rehnquist-for-John Roberts swap was pretty much even-steven because the two shared a common judicial philosophy, an O'Connor-for-Alito trade would turn the Court markedly to the right for many, many years to come.

Of course, a president has a right to shape the court in his political direction. The questions for this confirmation process are whether this president has the political ability to do so and whether his hoped-for reshaping makes a majority of Americans uneasy.

Indeed, even before the judge was officially nominated by the President, some of Alito's political detractors already were talking about having Senate Democrats use that filibuster option we heard so much about this past spring.

That unfortunate scenario was never a real possibility during the Roberts' confirmation process and Senate Democrats seemed likely to take their chances with Harriet Miers. But it's on the table now. And its use (or not) will depend entirely upon which party — upon which group of special interest lobbyists — succeeds in imprinting their perception of Alito onto America's mind's eye.

Want to get a feel for how things are going as this circus gears up? Listen to what Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter says about the nominee after they meet and discuss the law.

Specter is a pro-choice Republican who talked during the Roberts' hearing about Roe v. Wade being "super duper" binding precedent. Also listen to what Maine's two moderate Republican senators say. They are part of that Gang of 14 that generated the Senate compromise this spring that avoided a filibuster showdown then. Listen to Sen. Lindsay Graham, the sensible sound byte machine, who often is ahead of the curve when it comes to predicting outcomes.

So this winter we get the big fight we all thought we would get this summer or fall. It's going to be messy and ugly and disconcerting and it's hard to see or say now how it all ends.