Poll: Will Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, face a tough confirmation battle?

Politico’s Mike Allen reports that Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court when he makes the announcement at 10:15 this morning. If confirmed, she will be the first Latino to serve on the high court.

If there was ever a ‘wave the bloody shirt’ moment for Republicans in Congress, this is it. Holding up Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation will be their opportunity to score points with their base and also expand unease that some might feel after President Obama noted that he was looking for a justice with ‘empathy’ for everyday people.

On the other hand, picking a liberal Latino is likely to get Obama’s base in line behind him to help with the push.

And Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog provides some useful context on the fight the nation is about to witness:

The attacks are inevitable and tremendously regrettable, just as they were for Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. A cottage industry – literally an industry, given the sums of money raised and spent – now exists in which the far left and right either brutalize or lionize the President’s nominees. Because the absence of controversy means bankruptcy, it has to be invented by both sides, whatever the cost to the nominee personally and to the integrity of the judiciary nationally.

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For Republican Senators to come after Judge Sotomayor is not only hopeless when it comes to confirmation (something that did not deter Democrats in their attacks on Roberts and Alito) but a strategy that risks exacting a very significant political cost among Hispanics and independent voters generally, assuming that the attacks aren’t backed up with considerable substance.

The most likely dynamic by far is the one that played out for Democrats with respect to Chief Justice Roberts. Democratic senators, recognizing the inevitable confirmation of a qualified and popular nominee, decided to hold their fire and instead direct their attacks to President Bush’s second nominee.  Justice Alito was the collateral damage to that strategy. Here, with Justice Stevens’s retirement inevitable in the next few years, Republican senators are very likely to hold off conservative interest groups with promises to sharply examine President Obama’s second (potentially white male) nominee.

Wise-sounding words to me. What do you think? Are we in for a quick push or a long haul?

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