A number of comments congratulating Sonia Sotomayor on her confirmation as an Associate Supreme Court Justice have harangued Senator McCain for voting against Sotomayor's confirmation. They have rightly brought up Arizona's heavy Latino population. Other posts have mentioned Senator Sessions' hypocrisy in voting against Sotomayor because of what he viewed as racially insensitive comments on her part. I think there's a more blatant case of hypocrisy afoot that nobody has mentioned. It was the biggest reason I was offended when I heard Senator McCain planned to vote against Sotomayor's confirmation.
First check out the link:
McCain's hypocrisy
Apparently McCain no longer believes elections have consequences.
I think the extent to which we tend to view Supreme Court nominations as apolitical is overblown. The way Senators are forced to dance around direct questions and pretend that the Supreme Court is a blind arbiter of justice belies the underlying evidence that justices often do act in a manner that advances their policy preferences. So frankly I'm not sure I think Senators are wrong to vote against even qualified nominees that they openly disagree with politically.
I do however take issue with Senators who advance this apolitical myth about the judicial branch and then vote against a nominee who was, objectively speaking, more qualified than any Supreme Court nominee in decades.
There has been a great deal of debate over whether our country is more polarized now than ever before. Do the 31 "No" votes against Sotomayor- a nominee over which there was virtually no aggressive, coordinated campaign to defeat, as compared with 22 votes against Chief Justice Roberts, suggest there is truth to that claim?
One might expect a great number of "no" votes from the opposition party when the balance of the Court is being significantly altered. Certainly this explains the more forceful opposition to Alito replacing O'Connor as compared with Roberts replacing Rehnquist. The GOP can't use that excuse here.