Many have opined, and I agree, that the battle to defeat Samuel Alito missed its best chance to stop him in the Judiciary Committee hearings. The Democrats failed to skewer him. They spoke too long without questions. They all asked repetitive questions, they asked questioned easily evaded.
This must not happen again.
In all the talk of Alito's preparations for his nomination hearings, I heard a lot of discussion of his so-called murder boards where he practiced evasions, got coached on responses and body language. Here's my question: Did the Democrats run their own murder boards?
I can find no mention that they had, and my second question becomes: Why not?
As we approach the Senate hearings on Bush's wiretap program, I want all the Democratic senators involved in questioning witnesses,
especially hostile ones participating in mock hearings to practice their approach.
When the next SC Justice croaks, I want every Democrat on the Judiciary Committee fully practiced and ready to go full bear as hungry eager prosecutors trying to convict a defendant. Bush just rammed through an anti-consensus nominee if we ever saw one. He will not hesitate to do so again when the next Justice passes on. It is extremely likely this will happen before 2008, and even reasonably likely this will happen before November.
If a Senator isn't up to some quick thinking questioning, I want Harry Reid to replace them with someone else! Nothing personal Senator, not everyone is great at catching witnesses in contradictoray testimony, or firing back questions that catch them off guard, but we need our 8 Senators on the committee to be those types.
No more disorganized attacks hoping the nominees Bork themselves saying something ridiculous. No more of each Senator asking questions all over the map. Assign the work: Leahy, you've got Unitary Executive, Feinstein: You've got Roe, Biden: You have CAP. And so forth.
No matter what the hearing, from here on in, every Democrat must be expected to practice his or her questioning on any witness who is at all expected to be evasive or non-responsive. Hire actors, image consultants, successful former Prosecutors, High School Debate champions, I don't care. Film it all. Make the Senators watch. Make test audiences watch. Have speech writers write clever phrases to use in questioning. Make shit rhyme, invent a new meme. We need sound-bytes that the media will latch on to. We need gaffes, and most of all we need brilliant trenchant questioning that traps nominees in pincers of cold, iron inescapable logic.