I’ve spent the evening doing that thing I do, which is exploring the nooks and crannies of, if not the wingnut mind, at least its byproducts. And I just have to say that the nomination of Sonia Sotomayer to the Supreme Court has made these people, as my grandmother would have put it, ‘lose their shit."

Apparently the notion that "elections have consequences" hasn’t sunk in yet.

While you have some Republicans playing it close to the vest until their pollsters tell them how they’re going to vote, the base in concert with talk radio, wingnut welfare  havens like Commentary,  National Review, and the Weekly Standard, and the usual gang of blog idiots are going to go after Sotomayer hammer and tong…and I think that is great.

Among the many many many Republican miscues of the past eight years, I’ve always believed the one that made the American people sit up and take a long hard look at the Republican party was the Terri Schiavo case, when the elected members of the party became unwitting dupes of their own lunatic base. My sense is that, if they really want to go after and beat up on this Sotomayer, who presented herself very well this morning, they will pay for it at the polls for years to come. Not with Hispanics, who were lost to the party dating back to the Pete Wilson days (not that the peck-sniffier elements of the right can help themselves), or with women, but with people for whom "empathy" and compassion aren’t qualities to be  sneered at.

Nicely played, President Obama.