Saturday, January 14, 2006

How Low Can You Go?

I agree with Andrew Sullivan here about Senator Ted Kennedy's low blow at the Senator confirmation hearing--reading quotes from a satire article as if it were serious in order to somehow impugn Judge Alito as guilty by association:

I have to say that Senator Kennedy's attempt to smear Samuel Alito with an article in a magazine he never even read, an article that was apparently meant as satire, was about as low as it gets. It was a smear. In some ways, it was a symbol of how some Democrats think of people like the Alitos, people with obviously conservative leanings, but also the kind of people who would never engage in the basest of ethnic or sexual slurs. Kennedy hurt himself more than anyone. But it was disgusting nonetheless - not that, after Kennedy's performances in other hearings, it was particularly surprising. I'm not a Kennedy-hater. He's done some good things in the Senate, and I'm close to members of his family. But this tactic was crude, inappropriate in a judicial hearing, and completely counter-productive. It reminded me again why, for all my alarm at what has happened to Republicanism, the left is always there to remind me why I couldn't ever be a Democrat. I don't think I'm the only one.