The Senate Judiciary begins confirmation hearings July 13 on President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Then the Senate will exercise its Constitutional advice and consent prerogative over the president's nominee. A vote is expected by August 6 before Congress leaves for summer recess.

Recent history suggests that confirmation hearings on occasion can be quite a spectacle.

I recall the rancor and travesty surrounding the confirmation hearings for Judge Robert Bork in 1987. Within 45 minutes of Bork's nomination to the Court by President Ronald Reagan, Senator Ted Kennedy took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of Bork in a nationally televised speech declaring:

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters...,” (New York Times, June 5, 1987).

Kennedy's infamously despicable “Robert Bork's America” speech was a smear that lead the way to Bork's nomination being rejected in the committee by a 9–5 vote and then rejected in the full Senate by a 58–42 margin. However, Reagan's earlier and subsequent nominees were all handily confirmed by the Senate - Sandra Day O'Connor (1981), Antonin Scalia (1986) and Anthony Kennedy (1988).

In 1991, we saw the Clarence Thomas soap opera and one of the most divisive confirmation fights in Supreme Court history. At the hearings, Thomas rightly lashed out at his detractors with his famous “high-tech lynching” comment:

“This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves...,” (University of Virgina Law Library, October 11, 1991).

The committee split 7 to 7 with no recommendation and after extensive debate, the Senate narrowly confirmed Thomas by a vote of 52-48. A year earlier, President George H.W. Bush, who nominated Thomas, had seen his previous nominee, David Souter, confirmed too but by a far wider margin.

President Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsberg in 1993 and Stephen Bryer in 1994. President George W. Bush tapped John Roberts in 2005 and Samuel Alito in 2006. All were easily confirmed - John Roberts as the seventeenth chief justice.

It's interesting to note that of the ten nominees mentioned above - all eventually confirmed except Bork - five garnered 90 or more votes in the Senate, with four getting a grand slam vote - O'Connor (99-0); Scalia (98-0); Kennedy (97-0); Souter (90-9). Ginsberg had three “nay'' votes (97-3).

As the lobbying groups begin drawing their lines in the sand over Judge Sonia Sotomayor, ideology is clearly the battle field. Bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin, in the epilogue of his splendid book writes:

 “Today, the fundamental divisions in American society are not regional or religious but ideological...When it comes to the incendiary political issues that end up in the Supreme Court, what matters most is not the quality of the arguments but the identity of the justices...” (“The Nine,”- Inside The Secret World of the Supreme Court).

With scant enthusiasm I voted for John McCain. I did so because the next president would most likely have an early opportunity to make a Supreme Court nomination. McCain's choice would surely have been more suitable to conservatives than Barack Obama's. The American people didn't give McCain that opportunity.

While the Sotomayor hearings won't have the explosive fireworks of the Bork and Thomas spectacles, I'm confident that Senator Jeff Sesssions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee and other committee Republicans, will see to it that Judge Sotomayor receives a principled but thorough grilling when the hearings begin. I'm also certain that at the end of the day, Republicans will acquit themselves with distinction in fulfilling their Constitutional responsibilities.

Among the issues sure to surface before the committee include her Latino woman versus white male comment; her dismissive ruling in the Connecticut firefighters case, the number of her decisions which have been overturned and her “demeanor” problem on the bench.

Moreover, is her nomination a prime example of identity politics on display from a president who's suppose to be “post-racialist?” Shelby Steele thinks so. “The Sotomayor nomination commits the cardinal sin of identity politics: It seeks to elevate people more for the political currency of their gender and ethnicity than for their individual merit,” (“Sotomayor and the Politics of Race,”Wall Street Journal, June 8).

We conservatives should bear in mind that elections have consequences. Toobin echoes this truism as he tips his hat to George W. Bush. “So one factor - and one factor only - will determine he future of the Supreme Court; the outcomes of presidential elections. Presidents pick justices to extend their legacies; by this standard, George W. Bush chose wisely."

We may not like it, but Obama will get his Supreme Court pick. Yes, elections have consequences and so it goes.