‘Winning Right’

The last of three excerpts from the book “Winning Right: Campaign Politics And Conservative Policies”:

Senator Lindsey Graham (R- SC) had been a hero in the Roberts hearings, and as the third day of the Alito hearings was winding down he donned his hero’s cape again. Graham is largely conservative, but his independent streak makes him unpredictable. He is a reformer. And he is a genuinely good and decent human being who works hard to resist the easy allure of harsh partisanship in an increasingly polarized Senate.

He frustrated a number of his colleagues and me when he joined thirteen of his colleagues in the so-called Gang of Fourteen to broker a deal that fended off implementation of the constitutional, or “nuclear” option of allowing judicial nominees to be confirmed by the Senate with a simple majority rather than the sixty votes required to break a filibuster.

But it reflects his desire to foster a less partisan and polarizing environment in the Senate and to get back to a time when people could set aside partisan differences to work things out in a spirit of comity.

Graham was truly disgusted by the actions of some of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate and their effort to tarnish Alito’s sterling reputation with veiled inferences that he might harbor feelings of racial prejudice. He decided to put their innuendo right out there on the table, as the hearing transcript shows:

Graham: If you don’t mind, the suspicious nature that I have is that you may be saying that because you want to get on the Supreme Court; that you’re disavowing this now because it doesn’t look good. And really what I would look at to believe you’re not — and I’m going to be very honest with you — is: How have you lived your life? Are you really a closet bigot?

Alito: I’m not any kind of a bigot, I’m not.

Graham: No, sir, you’re not! And you know why I believe that? Not because you just said it — but that’s a good enough reason, because you seem to be a decent, honorable man.

At this point, the lips of Martha Alito, hearing someone say what surely she had been thinking for the past two days, began to quiver. Eventually, the tears came. As she was seated over her husband’s right shoulder and he was facing Graham to his left, she was squarely on camera the whole time.

I was unaware of it all until my BlackBerry vibrated with a message from Rachel Brand, which said, “I assume you all noticed that Mrs. Alito just walked out crying.”

I had not noticed, but I got up and left the hearing room and walked down the hall to the VP’s Dirksen Office.

Martha Alito was in the private office, her feet up on the window behind the desk, being consoled by a family member, who whispered to me, “She’s okay.”

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