Republicans Were Masters In the Race to Paint Alito
Democrats' Portrayal Failed to Sway the Public
By Lois Romano and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 2, 2006; A01
....By the time confirmation hearings began last month, Democrats knew that unless Alito made a big mistake or something damaging surfaced, he would be confirmed. But while there were endless meetings among the liberal advocacy groups, there was no coordinated strategy on the committee for questioning Alito.
Abortion was ruled out as a major issue for fear of alienating moderate Democrats. James Flug, a Kennedy aide who worked for the senator during the Nixon-era confirmation fights over Clement J. Haynsworth Jr. and G. Harrold Carswell, insisted that Kennedy and others could get traction pressing Alito's connection to the Princeton group, as well as his failure to recuse himself from cases involving mutual fund giant Vanguard, with which Alito had investments. Others believed it more fruitful to demonstrate that Alito's rulings on the circuit court never gave the little guy a fair shake.
The result, everyone agrees now, was a disaster. Committee Democrats were all over the lot the first day of the hearings, leaving their allies in the groups stricken that a valuable opportunity for tough questioning was squandered. While subsequent days went slightly better, the legalistic arguments were difficult to follow. Even Kennedy's demand for documents from the Princeton group was overshadowed by pictures of the nominee's wife, Martha-Ann Alito, in tears....
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Alito was more than ready and couldn't be budged off his prepared answers. And Republican senators such as Graham of South Carolina were prepped by the White House to do a "rehab" on Alito after any attack by a Democrat.
With the fight all but lost, Democrats had one last weapon -- a filibuster. But in the Democratic caucus, senators were uncomfortable with the idea. "It's bad politically," Schumer, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said at one meeting....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/01/AR2006020101597_pf.html