… attack dogs

I find it, as grave somber Senate Democrats like to say, “troubling.” Indeed, I find it not just “troubling” but sad that a party once so good at “the politics of personal destruction” has got so bad at it.

The last time they had a Supreme Court nominee to hang upside down in the Democrat bondage dungeon was the John Roberts hearings. And at least, when hatchet man Chuck Schumer professed himself “troubled” by the “fullness” of John Roberts’ “heart,” the crack oppo-research guys had uncovered an “inappropriate” use of the word “amigo” by Justice Roberts back in the early 1980s.

But, with Sam Alito the worst they come could up with was he might have been around some other guy who might have used the word “amigo,” not in the early ‘80s, but in the early ‘70s.

That’s it? It’s a tragedy to watch once fearsome attack dogs spend a week chasing their tails because they’re “concerned” about the “Concerned Alumni of Princeton” — though, of course, these days one’s heartened to find Mr. Kennedy still capable of chasing. Still, would it be too much to ask these guys to put in a little rehearsal time and practice grilling themselves in front of the bedroom mirror:

Sen. Patrick Leahy, Vermont Democrat: I find it troubling that as a young man you joined an all-white club affiliated with a national institution that has a very troubling historical pattern when it comes to the treatment of minorities.

Mr. Leahy: Yes, it’s true I joined the Vermont branch of the Democratic Party in the 1950s. But, I mean, I never met George Wallace or Robert C. Byrd or anyone. …

Sen. Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat: “I find it, uh, troubling, uh, that as a, uh, grown man you were a, uh, member, uh, of an, uh, organization, uh, with, uh, a, uh, very troubling, uh, track record on, uh, the treatment of, uh, women.

Mr. Kennedy: Yes, it’s, uh, true I was a member of the, uh, Kennedy family.

Mr. Kennedy: Please don’t interrupt. And it’s, uh, true, is it not, that you’ve, uh, made, uh, jokes that could be regarded as, uh, inappropriate and offensive to, uh, women, uh, you’ve, uh uh, known?

Mr. Kennedy: Well, uh, I named my dog Splash, but, uh, other than, uh, that, uh uh … .

It seems unfair only Sam Alito gets to play this game. Couldn’t somebody develop some software you could stick in your DVD and play “Senate Confirmation” at home? You would sit on the sofa and a Joe Biden hologram with eerily lifelike adjustable hair would hector you for hours for being uncooperative — “C’mon, old buddy, throw me a bone here, willya?” — while your spouse bursts into tears and flees in terror.

Even smear tactics require a certain plausibility. When you damn someone as a big scary mega-troubling racist misogynist homophobe and he seems to any rational observer perfectly nonscary and nontroubling, eventually you make yourself ridiculous. The boy who cried “Wolf” at least took the precaution of doing so when there was no alleged predator in view. If he’d stood there crying “Wolf” while pointing at a hamster, he would have been led away for counseling. That’s the stage the Senate Democrats are at.

More “troubling” for the party, the whole scarified routine is over something of ever more doubtful political value. Throughout last week’s hearings, the Democrats had five key concerns: abortion, warrantless wiretaps, abortion, abortion and abortion. Neither abortion absolutism nor constitutional protection for terrorists resonates with the broader public — and, indeed, going on cable TV round the clock for a week to flaunt such peculiar fixations only makes them look ever more disconnected from reality. When Ted Kennedy and company were demanding the ancient records of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton be subpoenaed, I received a fluttering of e-mails comparing the Dems to Sen. Joe McCarthy. But Red-baiting, unlike partial-birth abortion, had public support.

During the Roberts hearings, I compared the Senate Democrats to Lord Cardigan’s poor doomed dragoons facing the Russian guns in Tennyson’s “Charge Of The Light Brigade”:

Theirs not to reason why,

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