Unless there's a smoking gun we haven't seen yet, my initial proposal of
Question Strongly, Educate The Public and Be Glad They Didn't Nominate Someone Else appears
to be the one Senate Democrats have adopted:
Although they expect to subject President Bush's nominee to tough questioning at confirmation hearings next month, members of the minority party said they do not plan to marshal any concerted campaign against Roberts because they have concluded that he is likely to get at least 70 votes -- enough to overrule parliamentary tactics such as a filibuster that could block the nominee.
"No one's planning all-out warfare," said a Senate Democratic aide closely involved in caucus strategy on Roberts. For now, the aide said, Democratic strategy is to make it clear Roberts is subject to fair scrutiny while avoiding a pointless conflagration that could backfire on the party. "We're going to come out of this looking dignified and will show we took the constitutional process seriously," the aide said.
That's not to say that they're lying down like dogs, however:
Democrats said that instead of mounting a headlong assault on Roberts, they plan to use the hearings and the surrounding attention by the news media to remind voters of their party's values, including the protection of rights for individual Americans. The plan calls for emphasizing rights beyond abortion in an effort to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate. . . .
Without question, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee will subject Roberts to intense grilling -- and the discovery of new and damaging information about Roberts could dramatically change the strategy. But for now, Democratic lawmakers say they are less interested in opposing Roberts than in serving notice to Bush that they would react very differently if a more overtly conservative choice were made for a future Supreme Court vacancy.
I'll go back to what I said the day after the nomination: "The point of our opposition is not, given what we know now, to block his confirmation by any means necessary -- it is to reveal what conservative legal philosophy is, so that the public will want to guard against it, and vote against it, in the future. If we can use this as an educational moment, we can take back the Senate and the White House."