Conservative Bloggers To GOP Senators: Hold Your Fire
The conservative blogosphere's coverage of the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings has been relatively subdued thus far. The biggest reason is that most righty bloggers believe that Sotomayor's confirmation is inevitable; some are predicting that she'll receive as many as 75 votes. In fact, influential blogger Erick Erickson is explicitly urging his readers to "ignore" the Sotomayor hearings and instead focus their energies on political battles where the outcome is still in doubt, such as cap-and-trade and health care.
That said, conservative bloggers still believe that GOPers have something to gain from these hearings. The Heritage Foundation's Brian Darling argues that "this hearing will be an important teaching moment in history where conservative strict constructionist philosophy is explained to the American people in easy to undersand terms." Similarly, The American Spectator's W. James Antle, III argues that GOP senators "should [have] at least have two objectives in these hearings: 1.) Highlight the less popular aspects of a liberal judicial philosophy and 2.) Make political points about the discriminatory impact of Title VII."
So while conservative bloggers don't think that Sotomayor can be stopped, they still want GOP senators to aggressively (albeit respectfully) question her about her views. A few of them also want to see a lot of "nay" votes. RedState's hogan warns that conservatives "are watching this hearing particularly closely...to see whether Republicans are on the right road -- whether they have an ounce of core beliefs that can serve to provide backbone and a will to fight."
(IAN FAERSTEIN)