Greg picks up the most salient part of a New York Times story on the Sotomayor confirmation:
"We don’t have enough Republicans to filibuster even if we wanted to, which I don’t think we do," said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a member of the Judiciary Committee.
As Greg points out, this is important because, obviously, the confirmation is almost certain to go through (barring a huge Sotomayor skeleton, which seems pretty darned unlikely) but also because
...the admission suggests a recognition that going after Sotomayor could damage the party’s long-term prospects for expansion. Cornyn, recall, rebuked Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich for calling Sotomayor a "racist."
Second, it also hints at more coming tensions between expansion-minded GOP party leaders and the party’s conservative wing; Cornyn’s comments aren’t likely to sit well with the conservative groups that have launched a campaign to pressure GOP Senators to filibuster Sotomayor.
Cornyn's rebuke of Gingrich had minimal effect, Eric Kleefeld reports. Gingrich says in a new post that he shouldn't have used the word "racist," but she's one anyway. Gingrich is no dummy--he knows what's going to make those cable show bookers keep landing on his card in their rolodex. The sad part is, it works.
(And speaking of the sideshow, why is this man's ass firmly planted at MSNBC?)
That will remain a sideshow that will fill the coffers of the far right issue groups, a ploy that Jeffrey Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III, ranking Judiciary Committee member, is willing to go along with by trying to delay the hearings and vote as long as possible. He says that her lengthy judicial record demands it, seemingly forgetting his advice to the Senate when it was Alito's turn: "You don't have to read everything he's written."