Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr., is a step closer to becoming Justice Alito now that the Judiciary Committee voted 10-8 to approve his nomination and send it to the floor for a final vote of the full Senate.
To say the party-line vote was a disappointment is an understatement. The hearings exposed a strain of viciousness and partisan bitterness. Over and over, committee Democrats tried to insinuate that the judge was a racist, a bigot and a crook. It got them nowhere. Even Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) expressed his frustration, telling The National Journal "we should not even have these hearings." Meanwhile, in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan said the hearings were not a defeat but a disaster for the Democrats.
Most Americans see Alito, she writes, and say "He's like me." The liberals' "snarly" attacks on Alito failed, Noonan writes, because the liberal monopoly of the media has been broken. A CNN-Gallup poll showed that more Americans favored Alito's confirmation after the hearings (54%) than before (49%). At the outset of the hearings committee Democrats hoped to paint Judge Alito as outside the mainstream, but the picture that Americans now see is that today's Democratic Party is outside the mainstream.
We commend Judge Alito--and especially Mrs. Alito--for their dignity and courage through this whole episode.
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