That’s the title of my new Confirmation Tales post. An excerpt:

[Diane] Sykes’s conservative profile might well have guaranteed that she would soon be added to the growing list of filibustered nominees. Longtime Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill surely overstated things when he observed that “All politics is local.” But even as Senate Democrats worked to nationalize their campaign against Bush’s nominees, his adage carried force.
For United States senators, the locality that matters is the state they serve—the state from which they have been elected and from which they hope to win re-election. And for reasons of state politics, Wisconsin’s two Democratic senators, Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold, were eager to see Sykes confirmed.

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