The best guess of a Senate Republican source is that the vote on confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will come Thursday night.

With 60 Democrats in the Senate, her confirmation was never really in doubt. But John Roberts received 22 “no” votes from the opposition party, and early in this process, the aim of the conservative legal community was to top that number.

That goal has been accomplished, at most recent count; 27 Republicans have indicated publicly that they will vote against Sotomayor, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona. There are six Republicans who have said they will vote for her; seven have not yet indicated which way they will vote.

At this point, no Democrats are expected to vote “no”; with Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska on board, one of the few remaining remote possibilities is Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska. It is also possible that ailing senators Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Robert Byrd of West Virginia will miss the vote.

The back-of-the-envelope math comes out to about a 66-32 vote with Kennedy and Byrd absent.

On Roberts, the Democrats split down the middle, 22 votes for and against; it seems likely that the Republican Senate caucus will be solidly in opposition to Sotomayor. For Republicans who wanted a tough line on Sotomayor, that’s a nice showing and a useful gauntlet for the next Supreme Court fight. Perhaps the most interesting repercussion of the Sotomayor confirmation process is the obliteration of the “empathy standard” on both sides of the aisle. Sotomayor refused to back Obama’s metaphor that a judge’s heart takes the judge the last mile of the marathon of decision; she explicitly refuted it and kept emphasizing the importance of precedent.

As one Senate Judiciary source put it to me, “the empathy standard won’t be the talking point for any future nominee.”