from yahoo news:


Nominee little boost to GOP
Manu Raju Manu Raju Sun Jun 21, 10:33 pm ET

Nearly a month after President Barack Obama picked her for the Supreme
Court, Republican senators say Sonia Sotomayor isn’t serving as the
political lightning rod some in their party had hoped she would be.

“She doesn’t have the punch out there in terms of fundraising and
recruiting, I think — at least so far,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.),
who most likely will be elected as the No. 4 Republican in Senate
leadership this week.

The calculus could certainly change when Sotomayor’s confirmation
hearings begin July 13. But the Republican senators’ initial review of
Sotomayor’s record, together with the meetings they’ve had with her,
have left them doubting that she’ll be controversial enough to help them
or hurt the Democrats heading into the 2010 elections.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said the opposition to Sotomayor doesn’t
have the same intensity he felt in 2005, when the GOP threatened the
minority’s right to filibuster judicial nominees.

“Right now, you don’t have the fever pitch you did over the filibuster,”
said Graham, a member of the Judiciary Committee. “It depends on how she
does [at the hearings]. If she performs well, no. If she performs
poorly, potentially, yes.”

Roberts and Samuel Alito. At the time, Schumer’s DSCC took some shots at
Bush for packing the court with “right-wing ideologues,” and the
committee targeted then-Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) over Alito’s
position on abortion; Chafee later voted against Alito.

Senate Republicans are very sensitive to the risk of bullying Sotomayor,
who would be the first Hispanic on the court — especially after Rush
Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich called her a “racist” for her remarks that a
“wise Latina woman” could come to a better conclusion than a white
judge. Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the DSCC, said Democrats will again
be gauging whether to target any Republicans who “take the
Limbaugh-Gingrich approach” to the confirmation proceedings.

Thune said the response from Republican senators has been relatively
muted in part because Sotomayor was nominated to replace Justice David
Souter rather than a more conservative justice.

“When one of the conservatives leaves the court, then I think you’ll
have a huge fight, and I think that will be very galvanizing,” Thune said.

- - -

Nothing better politically than seeing the GOP, the party that did its
best to destroy America, becoming more irrelevant.