Always Alert

by digby

I know everybody loves a Nixonian Republican named Martha who cries, but would it be too much for the press to actually report the backround on this little kabuki today?

TIME wrote last night:

The always-alert Creative Response Concepts, a conservative public relations firm, sent this bulletin: “Former Alito clerk Gary Rubman witnessed Mrs. Alito leaving her husband’s confirmation in tears and is available for interviews, along with other former Alito clerks who know her personally and are very upset about this development.”

In case that was too much trouble for the journalists, the firm also e-mailed out a statement from the Judicial Confirmation Network calling “for the abuse to stop.”

This was all spontaneous, of course. Any resemblance to Clarence Thomas’ “high tech lynchings” or Lynn Cheney’s “this is not a gooood man” is purely coincidental.

I think it’s time for Ted Kennedy to haul some little girls who were strip searched in to testify. You wanna play? Bring it.

And it’s also time for Democrats to see this as the gift it is. For once the snivellers are the Republicans, playing against type. But that means we’re playing against type also. It’s not often that the country sees us as “too tough.” We should play like Pat Fitzgerald and say “we’re just doing our jobs, ma’am. This is important business.” Let Huckleberry and the boys whimper like little old ladies.

Via Talk Left’s fine analysis of yesterday’s hearings

Update: Rending his garments and speaking in tongues, Roger L. Simon hits a new low.

Update II: Uncomfortable with being seen as the delicate Ashley and Melanie’s they are, there’s this:

And I think Mrs. Alito was crying because she couldn’t jump out of her seat and beat the living hell out of those arrogant condescending bastards who were making those false and scurrilous implications about her husband.

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