Washington Post reporter Chris Cillizza offers a scorecard of “winners and losers” from yesterday's Sotomayor hearings.
His second “winner”? Lindsey Graham, who Cillizza says “was the Republican senator best able to rile Sotomayor” and “managed to unsettle Sotomayor.” Cillizza provided no evidence to support that assertion. Nor did he mention that Graham asked Sotomayor if she has a temperament problem - a question that was rather odd coming at the end of a day in which she had answered a barrage of often hostile questions without losing her composure.
Cillizza wrote that Graham's “low-key delivery” proved that he is “one of the best questioners/smart legal minds in the Senate” -- but even Chris Matthews found Graham's questioning condescending. When even Chris Matthews thinks someone is being condescending to a woman, there's a problem.
Even more odd, Cillizza couldn't think of a single Republican to list under the day's “losers.” Not, say, Jeff Sessions, the Senator whose own judicial nomination was derailed amid charges of racism - and who suggested that Sonia Sotomayor should have ruled the way Judge Cabranes did because he is also “of Puerto Rican ancestry.” Not only that, Sessions blundered into a Marshall McLuhan moment - something that just doesn't happen in real life.
No, Cillizza's “losers” were President Obama and Democrat Herb Kohl - not because Kohl did anything wrong, but because the cable channels didn't cover him.