The Alito filibuster - Yes, but...

The Republicans want the Alito vote on Tuesday, conveniently right before the State of the Union.

As for the filibuster, here are my thoughts.

I support a filibuster of Alito IF - IF, IF, IF, IF, IF - the multi-million dollar liberal non-profits and the Democratic and moderate Republican Senators organize a true CAMPAIGN to convince the American public that a filibuster is necessary and good.

To date, I haven't seen that campaign.

What I have seen is Democratic Senators doing what they do best. Finally taking the right position on an issue, but doing nothing to build public support FOR that position. In politics both are crucial. It's not enough for a politician to do the right thing. He/she (and the big non-profits) have to devise the public relations campaign (online, offline, grassroots, media, etc.) to create the buzz in their favor. Otherwise, the public will slam them for what they're doing, the effort will be a failure, and the members of Congress in question will face a harder time getting re-elected.

That is not to suggest that politicians should become wimps like Democrat Bob Casey in Pennsylvania who's running against Santorum and thinks he needs to be a Republican in order to win. No, it's possible to remain a Democrat and win, but you can't just vote the right way, you have to create an environment in which the public agrees with and supports your vote.

Unfortunately, that didn't, and isn't, happening with this Alito confirmation. The big non-profits got millions, and what do we have to show for it? The Democratic Senators held a week of hearings, and other than Joe Biden's chance to bloviate as usual in front of the cameras, what did they accomplish?

Some day Democrats will learn what Republicans have long known. It takes a campaign to win an issue. When the Democrats and their traditional million-dollar non-profits learn that lesson, and implement it, then I'll be all in favor of a filibuster. But a filibuster without the campaign will not only fail, it will convince already spineless Democrats that the filibuster itself was a mistake because it was a filibuster, not because the filibuster wasn't supported with a real public relations campaign. Democrats will learn the wrong lesson from their failure, and they'll end up even wimpier/Caseyer/Liebermaner next time.

So, yes. I'm all for the filibuster. But if someone doesn't come up with a brilliant PR campaign, online and offline, to support this filibuster - and fast - it's going to fail and we're going to pay for a price for that failure.