The democrats really did a number on themselves yesterday. They presented the perfect example of what WE DON”T want our political leaders to be – arrogant bullies. Too many have said too well today for me to waste time trying to add my two cents. I think Kennedy did more damage in more ways than can be fully appreciated in only a few hours time. So let me point you to some of the best out there.

I want to start with my good friend Mark Coffey and the perfect rejoinder to Ted -hiccup- Kennedy

When Kennedy goes into attack dog mode, look him straight in the eye, and say the following:

“Senator, what I (did, said, thought) was unfortunate, and a sign of my immaturity at the time. After all, Senator, surely even you did at least one thing in your life that you’ve come to regret.”

As for Biden and the liberal press, Mark found this gem from Richard Cohen

In 1988, his stump speech was perilously similar to the one used by Neil Kinnock, Britain’s Labor Party leader.

Why, yes, now that you mention it; I supposed a plagiarized piece does come perilously close to its source…

As for the smear attack on Alito, Powerline runs a response from one of his extremely liberal clerks who comes to his defense, with a powerful smack down on the damage the Dems are doing to the Senate they serve:

In light of the Alito feeding frenzy, I feel compelled as a liberal and a former clerk to speak out and attempt to offer a different perspective to perhaps stem or at least counter what I see as a short sighted, ill considered and counter productive attack strategy, made, sadly, by the very same liberal groups whose mission and philosophy I ordinarily support, and embrace. I did not want to be part of the spin, but I don’t know how to stop it except to say what I know and hope some will hear it.

Rick Moran had this to say

The performance of many Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee during the Alito confirmation hearings has been a shocking display of self-aggrandizing, mean-spirited, boorish and ill mannered behavior not seen since the impeachment hearings during the Clinton era. Then it was some Republican Congressmen who were so desperate to advance their cause that they allowed loutish behavior to substitute for reasoned discourse. In the case of Senate Democrats, they don’t even have the excuse that they are arguing weighty issues vital to the republic.
…
Either way, one wonders why if the Democrats are so concerned about Alito’s nominal membership in a group that sought to exclude minorities they haven’t taken their own Senate Leader Robert Byrd to task for belonging to an organization – the KKK – that sought to lynch them.

And if the Democrats are going to drag out 25 year old articles from The Prospect and (God help us!) the National Review maybe we should dig into some back issues of Ramparts or other lefty “alternative” news digests that called for the violent overthrow of the United States government. I daresay John Kerry would probably have a few anxious moments if someone threw that in his face.

Ed Morrissey also reminds the holier-than-we Senate Dems of their support for someone much more aligned with racism than CAP:

When what should be a simple confirmation process reduces family members to tears, it shows that one party has degenerated into a secular Inquisition. And let me remind you that it was this party that, on more than one occasion, elected a former Klansman to the post of Majority Leader — a man who as recently as three years ago defended the use of the “n-word”.

Tigerhawk does a great job of extending my point about how Kennedy did the unthinkable and tried to violate the privacy of a private citizen for obviously partisan reasons:

But the fact of the Congressional subpoena power does not make Teddy Kennedy any less a hypocrite in demanding the coercive extraction of the records of a political organization. We need to say it again: Senator Kennedy took the scary position that it was just and appropriate for the Congress to extract by coercion the private, internal records of a political advocacy group just because it was considering the nomination of a person who had once been a member of that organization.

To understand how weird this is, consider the following “thought experiment”: If the next Democratic SCOTUS nominee once belonged to the American Civil Liberties Union(as Ruth Bader Ginsburg actually did) and, say, Sam Brownback proposed issuing a subpoena for the “records” of the ACLU to help him “understand” the nominee’s testimony, what do you imagine the reaction of the mainstream media might be? The implications of Senator Kennedy’s demand for freedom of speech and association are appalling. Where’s the outrage?

Next time I will email Tigerhawk my point so he can make it!

I know I missing a lot of great comments out there – my apologies. But it is clear the democrats really skewered themselves by using lies and inuendo to destroy a good and honest man. We should have a process that is uplifting an makes all proud. One that confirms the President’s suspicions that he has selected one of our finest to the Supreme Court. One that must and should find serious flaws if necessary – but not one that makes them up out of whole clothe.

We should celebrate when someone as reached this point and adds their name to the short list of top jurists. But if the Dems can’t do that much – they should provide Alito the same respect Reps provided Ginsburg. If they are so much better than Reps, they should be able to handle this much.