Which flaming conservatives? So far, the ones that matter – the Republican senators – have at least publicy been very civil and even welcoming towards her.

Senators are almost always reserved in their statements about nominees. To say that their voices alone matter and we can ignore all other conservatives is, sorry, somewhat disingenuous. Right now, the most influential voices in the conservative community are Limbaugh, Gingrich, O’Reilly, Hannity, Rove, Coulter, and others; along with widely-known conservatives like Huckabee, Tancredo, Liz Cheney, Pat Robertson, and others–all calling Sotomayor “racist,” claiming she’s an extremist “activist,” etc. etc. These are not minor players. Almost every heavy hitter on the conservative side is flaming Sotomayor something vicious.

To claim that these people are “irrelevant” ignores the fact that they wield great influence–else you would not see the spectacle of GOP leaders kowtowing apologies to people like Rush when they even mildly criticize him.

If Senators are going to beg Rush for forgiveness publicly, you can bet your last dollar that they will pay very close attention to what Rush can make the base believe about Sotomayor. Were the people you call “irrelevant” never to say anything, things would be quite different. They are not irrelevant to many, perhaps most Republican Senators. And if these “irrelevant” people are successful enough, they can even make the Democrats flee in weak-kneed fashion, as they have before and will do again.

I wonder if these pieces aren’t smokescreens in order to divert attention from more pressing matters, for example concerns about Sotomayor from the left, or that there’s very little that’s known about her on vital, or at least hot-button, issues.

Don’t know about you, but I’ve been hearing quite a few such stories. But frankly, it goes way too far to suggest that the media is actually blowing up reporting about right-wing protestations to mask attention about left-wing concerns. Even if you do believe that the media is so heavily left-wing, it would be quite the conspiracy just to bring cover for Democratic commentators. And let’s face it, when you have Newt Gingrich openly calling Sotomayor “racist” and Tom Tancredo comparing La Raza to the KKK, you cannot realistically blame the media for drawing attention away from other Sotomayor stories. The right-wingers saying these things bear full responsibility for that.

As for us not knowing much about her on hot-button issues, you can’t be surprised by that–for 2 to 3 decades now, that has virtually been a pre-requisite for Supreme Court nominees. I get the impression, in fact, that we know much more about Sotomayor’s views before her confirmation than we knew about Roberts’ or Alito’s. Certainly we know much more about her than we knew about Thomas.

…it’s more important that we prod the Democratic senators into getting tough with her and pinpointing where she stands, be it on abortion, free speech, etc.

Not to worry, there’ll be plenty of questions on that. In case you haven’t noticed, Senate Democrats have not been the least bit gun-shy in going up against Obama. Unlike the GOP with Bush, Dems in the Senate are anything but a rubber-stamp body.

Why not choose a “flaming liberal” in order to counter-effect the two justices Bush bestowed upon us during his presidency?

Which is what a lot of liberals hoped for and are presently saying. But as some have pointed out, Obama ran as a moderate technocrat, he was praised by liberals as a moderate technocrat, liberals voted for a moderate technocrat, and now many liberals are shocked that there is a moderate technocrat in the White House.

For all the right-wing bluster, Obama is a tenth as liberal as Bush was conservative, just as Sotomayor is a tenth as liberal as people like Scalia and Alito are conservative. If Obama is a Socialist, then Bush was ultra-Facsist.

…the GOP has to disregard them because they can’t afford to lose their Latino support (whereas Rush and the rest can.)

You’re assuming that most people differentiate between their Republican senators and Republicans as a whole. When you have Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Liz Cheney, Mike Huckabee, Karl Rove, Ann Coulter, and Tom Tancredo all spouting the same message, I don’t think that many people will think them “outside” the Republican party and somehow divorced from their Republican senators. Party affiliation is very powerful–which is why so many Republican candidates were doing their best to distance themselves from their own party last election. Even Michael Steele had signs made saying “Michael Steele, Democrat” (which he claimed meant “[I am a] Michael Steele Democrat,” or a Democrat who supports Michael Steele.) Another case in point: when Arlen Specter changed parties, for the first week or so his positions were identical to when he was a Republican–but he was vilified by right-wingers nonetheless. When he drifted towards the Democratic agenda, nobody’s view of him changed much aside from Democrats calming down a bit.

Party affiliation often trumps everything else. Your example of Cronyn actually defies your own point. The very fact that Cronyn had to distance himself from Limbaugh and the others is proof of this affiliation: if people did differentiate between him and people like Gingrich and Limbaugh, then why did Cronyn have to make that statement “distancing” himself from them?

Republicans, already none too attractive to the Hispanic community, in their knee-jerk attacks against Sotomayor, may well be completely alienating the vast majority of Hispanic voters for the next generation.

Steve:

Probably not, but it is an important event in today’s political arena. Attempts to derail a nomination to SCOTUS usually only succeed if there is something really scandalous or highly unusual about a nominee (Bork and Miers were rather interesting exceptions for very different reasons). But it would appear that a highly vocal and notably high-profile chunk of the Republican ranks are making heated efforts to make this nomination controversial, more than is usually the case–and it is an excellent question as to “why”?

Think about it: Republicans have to know that they hurt the party by alienating Hispanics and women. Yet their attacks on Sotomayor do that, excessively. If they believe that Sotomayor is inevitable, then why are they doing this? Some will likely be doing it out of sheer reflex, especially the punditry, especially blowhards like Limbaugh. But Gingrich? Rove? They and several others are not pundits, they understand the political arena from the positions of inside players, and they are not idiots. So what is their angle?

Possibly they are trying to position not only themselves but the public perception of the major forces here. The current right-wing movement against Sotomayor smacks of perception-setting, of what the right-wing does often and well: establishing a “truth” with a media blitz. The “Liberal Media” myth is one example, where they got the public to believe that whatever the media says, the “truth” is well to the right of that. Sotomayor is quite the moderate, but if they can make people believe she is a blazing liberal, they set a key marker for the public. Even if Sotomayor passes, it will be perceived as being about as liberal a nomination as Obama can get away with–anyone who is actually liberal would thereafter be seen as such an extremist as to be unacceptable. Or, possibly, it is a positioning that attempts to paint Obama as more liberal, or the court as more liberal. In the end, the more liberal the public believes these people or institutions to be, the better the conservatives can play a variety of issues to the public and come off themselves as moderates.

I think that’s the real play here: pushing the dial so that right is seen as moderate and moderate is seen as liberal. And don’t scoff: so far, it has worked very, very well.