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Originally Posted by scaeagles
Again, then EVERY confirmation vote is going to come down to party line.
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Really? Do you honestly believe every member of the Senate in either party shares precisely the same personal ideology? "We are Deomcrat, resistance is futile."
I'm not talking party ideology. Personal ideology. To me, that's the only valid voting basis. I honestly believe that if our representatives actually started voting based on their personal ideology, party-line voting would disappear because the most confirmable candidates would be the ones whose ideology intersects with the most people. Especially when we're talking Constitution. I think there is a lot more crossing of party lines with personal Constitutional ideology than with anything else because Constitutional interpretation is such a fundemental thing that no amount of party affinity is really going to change your mind if you disagree.
But that's not how it works. You can trot Ginsberg out all you want, but the fact is she was voted in because it was politically advantageous for the Republicans to do so. It had nothing to do with whether or not she was the most qualified individual for the job. Same with Roberts, the Democrats didn't oppose the nomination not because they thought he was the most qualified, but because it was the poitically advantageous thing to do.
As an aside, what's your definition of "qualified"? Because if does not involve at least in some part an examination of the person's ideology, then all I see is hard facts such as time served and education history. And if that's the case, why bother having hearings and a vote. Just feed the resume into Monster, put the "Supreme Court Justice" filter on, and see if it fits the bill.