There now … nominating a conservative to the Supreme Court wasn’t that scary, was it? Hey, who wants to go again?

Democrats have the most exaggerated reputation for fearsomeness since Saddam Hussein’s vaunted “Elite Republican Guard” — the ones who ran like scared schoolgirls when U.S. forces toppled Iraq in 17 days flat.

A few years ago, the Democrats wouldn’t allow a vote on Bush’s Hispanic, black and female judicial nominees. Sen. Bill Frist was afraid of what the Democrats might do, so he backed down. Scary Democrats! And not just Joe Biden’s hair plugs — everything about the Democrats was scary to Sen. Frist!

The nominations languished, and eventually some of the nominees, like Miguel Estrada, withdrew their names.

Then a Republican lawyer on the Judiciary Committee, Manuel Miranda, found memos Democrats left on open computer files proving that the Democrats were targeting nominees like Estrada solely because they were Hispanic.

What do you suppose the Democrats would have done if they ever found a memo by Republican Senate staffers opposing Ruth Bader Ginsburg only because she was Jewish?

For reasons I still don’t understand, instead of these memos being the Democrats’ scandal, they became the Republicans’ scandal. Democrats were outraged that Miranda had not chastely refused to read the memos Democrats had stupidly left on open files. Frist fired Miranda.

The man most responsible for blocking Bush’s judicial nominees in the first term was Sen. Tom Daschle. He is now citizen Tom Daschle, having been thrown out of office by South Dakota voters, despite running lots of TV ads showing him hugging President Bush. Daschle’s loss gave Republicans an even larger majority in the Senate.

Yes, these Democrats certainly are a force to be reckoned with!

I will dispense with recapitulating the unpleasantness over Bush’s last high court nominee, except to say that within days of Bush’s nominating Democrat Harry Reid’s friend, Harriet Miers, nearly every Republican in the nation was opposed to her. The only exceptions were people whose sole reason for living is to receive a personal phone call from Karl Rove.

Only because of the grassroots revolt against Miers were Republicans in Washington finally forced to face their worst nightmare. Terror, thy name is Samuel Alito. Or as he is now known: “Justice Samuel Alito.”

The New York Times recently described the campaign by Republican insiders to get Alito on the court as a calculated strategy, similar to Gen. Eisenhower’s execution of the Normandy invasion. The meticulous plan, according to the Times, was mapped out by a secret conspiracy of Republicans much like the Illuminati, also known as, “the same weenies who gave us Harriet Miers.”

According to Times reporter David Kirkpatrick, the weenies “laid out a two-part strategy to roll out behind whomever the president picked, people present said. The plan: first, extol the nonpartisan legal credentials of the nominee, steering the debate away from the nominee’s possible influence over hot-button issues. Second, attack the liberal groups they expected to oppose any Bush nominee.”

At no point in the article exposing the secret Republican plan did Kirkpatrick mention that the nominee himself ignored the plan. Sam Alito was a walking hot-button issue. His sainted mother’s remarks put a quick end to the Republicans’ “stealth” campaign. Alito is everything Washington weenies have been petrified of since — well, probably since the Bork nomination.

And yet, despite the NARAL ladies running around Capitol Hill with machetes, Alito was confirmed by the Senate in the exact same 58-42 vote that Robert Bork got (except reversed this time).

That’s what happens when you win elections. No wonder Democrats don’t get this — they’ve only won a couple of elections in the last quarter-century.

It’s one thing for Democrats to be in denial about steady Republican election victories since 1994. It’s quite another for Republicans to be in denial about them, too.

COPYRIGHT 2006 ANN COULTER

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