I’ve been away for a late holiday retreat with my folks, and so I’ve missed the beginning of the Alito hearings. Doesn’t look like something that’s hard to catch up on though. All hail the blogosphere!

I checked out:

• Drudge and Rush for the conservative take. Best Rush quote of the day: “We’re seeing that the Democrats are not prepared to deal with Alito. They’re not intellectually prepared and they’re not intellectually capable.”
• Daily Kos for the liberal take. The commenters have started spatting amongst themselves (”I told you this would happen. Kerry sucks!” “Dean sucks!” “You suck!”), and flogging the Democrats for not being more extreme and the press for not being more biased in their favor. Brilliant advice, guys. With strategy like that, the GOP should have 100% of Congress by 2010.
• Clifton at “Cruciform Axis”, because he actually watched the hearings and gives a fine blow-by-blow description of day one and day two. — “It’s 11:24 and Sen Biden is speaking. Does anyone have a cheese grater handy? I want to shave my head bald with it.” Made me actually guffaw.

This is the kind of news event that is custom-made for the New Media, because it’s got to be obvious to everyone that all anyone cares about in all of this is whether their team is winning or losing. Did Alito make the Democrats look stupid? Well, that’s a given, because we know from the Judge Roberts confirmation hearings that liberal sound-bytes don’t have much impact in this particular setting, since there are grown-ups in the room. But did Alito make them look so stupid that even the Old Media are duty-bound to notice it? Apparently he did, since CNN had to concede that he was doing “pretty well.” So, home team scores!

Did the Democrats find any way to paint Alito as an “extremist” (by which of course they would mean, “person who doesn’t vote Democrat”)? I’m thinking the answer is no. They’re casting about, for sure. But they don’t have the monopoly over the spin that they used to, and so firing off “When did you stop beating your wife?” questions isn’t enough anymore.