This is either going to be hilarious or heartbreaking. On the one hand, a nasty partisan Supreme Court confirmation is going to require a lot of hard work and patience. Now would be a good time to have a well-funded primary campaign challenger to wave in front of perennial turncoats like Joe Liberman. We don’t need any of your “Compromise is what the American people want” bullshit, thankyouverymuch. The Democrats have done a good job holding the coalition together, but this is going to be the ultimate test. Shine your filibustin’ shoes boys and girls, it’s gonna be a looong few months.

At the same time, this is also going to be the funniest thing to hit wingnuttery since Jesus didn’t come back to Earth in 2000. Not just “red tape on a protester’s mouth at Terri Schiavo’s hospice” funny or the President saying “I couldn’t imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah.” funny. No, this confirmation process will be Mel Gibson’s Jesus snuff film, laugh out loud, Long Dong Silver funny. Robertson, Dobson, Falwell, they’ll all be pouting publicly that the President owes them a conservative loony on the bench. Replacing a moderate with an ultra-conservative is the golden goose for these guys, so you can expect them to give the thumbs down to anyone who utters the word “abortion” without using the words “butcher”, “slaughter”, or “holocaust”.

In the end, either the Religious wrong will loose their bid to place a theocratic judicial activist in the court and will abandon the GOP or they’ll win and the American people will finally see that the Republican party really are the small tent, witch burning, big government religious puppets that we’ve been saying they are. I’m kinda hoping for the former, but you never know with these guys.

UPDATE : DavidNYC over at DailyKos has some good ideas on action you can take right now to help in the nomination fight.