A "Delay" Senate Democrats Can Love

From the "Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing" Department comes the news that Senate Donks will "hold over" Judge Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination, delaying a final floor vote by a week:

Senate Democrats plan to delay the Judiciary Committee's vote on Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court for at least a week, slowing what could have been a quick confirmation process for President Bush's pick to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter had hoped to hold a committee vote on Alito's nomination on January 17, a little over a week from the Monday start of the federal appellate judge's confirmation hearings.

But Senate [Minority] Leader Harry Reid told Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-TN, on Thursday that Democrats will invoke their right to hold the Alito committee vote over for one week, Senate leadership aides told The Associated Press.

Hmmph. After delaying his hearings for a month, additional time that has not enabled the hard Left to come up with any more ammo against the Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge than they had...well, a month ago. Or a month before that. And in exchange for a solemn pledge that the Dems would throw up no more procedural obstacles! Boy, you can always count on lib perfidy, cantcha?

Perhaps they're holding out hope that Judge Alito will stumble during the hearings and the additional week will provide the chance to gin up a filibuster and bully majority Republicans away from a confirmation filibuster ban. If so, this NSRC statement from Senator John Cornyn should serve as a wakeup call:

There have been reports that the Committee vote will de delayed one week. This would contradict the understanding those of us on the Committee came to in December when we agreed to demands by Democrats to delay the hearings until this month so that they would have more than adequate time to examine his record. They have now had far more time to examine his record than the Committee had to examine the records of Justice Ginsburg or Justice Breyer.

“I hope the reports are inaccurate. The last time a member of the Committee demanded to hold over the vote on a Supreme Court nominee was 1971. The only purpose the delay would serve would be to give those on the Committee who are already intending to vote against Judge Alito more time to find a justification for their negative vote. If the reports are true, it would represent a further coarsening of the judicial confirmation process—not to mention another partisan, obstructionist tactic by a minority of Senators who are frustrated that their views do not prevail at the ballot box.”

If the reports are true, it would also represent yet another example of the folly of acceding to Democrat demands that are inherently unreasonable and inevitably duplicitous. Alito's hearings should have been scheduled for early December and the minority told to go pound sand if they didn't like it. It is only their advanced intellectual deterioration, and the excellence of the President's nominee, that will render futile the obstruction that Republicans have bent over backwards to indulge - and apparently always will.