As I've noted here and here and here and in several other pieces I'm too lazy to dig up, the GOP's hostility toward empathy, now fully out in the open, is electoral poison. There's a reason Bush and Rove concocted their "compassionate conservatism" fiction -- to make their party seem more warm and fuzzy to swing voters. Now, they're not even pretending. And look how that value polls:

Do you think empathy is an important characteristic for a Supreme Court Justice to possess or not? Yes No

18-29 63 17

30-44 47 34

45-59 55 26

60+ 46 35 White 41 39

Black 81 4

Latino 79 4

Other 79 5 Men 48 34

Women 56 24 Dem 73 12

GOP 18 56

Ind 54 28



There's a reason the Democratic Party is the party of ethnic and racial minorities, women, and youth. They all think empathy is a good thing. Even whites are evenly split. Now look at the geographic breakdown, from the same question above:

Northeast 63 18

South 41 42

Midwest 55 25

West 53 27



That's the danger of being a rump regional party -- you lose touch with the rest of America. If half of southerners want an indifferent and callous government, that's their prerogative of course. But when the rest of America disagrees, it makes for a nationally unelectable Republican Party.

Republicans at the Sotomayor hearings think they are scoring political points. And they are -- for Democrats.