The editors of the Washington Post have an interesting take on the first day of Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings. They agree that Sen. Lindsey Graham has a point — if he uttered the equivalent of the “wise Latina” line, his career would be over — and appears to concede that there are legitimate reasons to vote against confirming Sotomayor: “Graham may yet vote against confirmation for Judge Sotomayor. But if he does, it seems likely to be on the merits as he views them and not as a ploy for political gain.”

Having said that, just how much political gain is there from voting “no”? With a “yes” vote, there’s a potential loss of support from conservatives, which must be balanced against some pickup from Hispanics, or at least avoiding a certain level of antagonism. But the Roberts and Alito votes weren’t big factors in the 2006 election; other issues will loom larger as November 2010 approaches.

Beyond that, the theme of the editorial, “Two Wrongs,” is that when Republican senators bring up “Obama’s votes against these Bush nominees, they are right to be critical; they would be wrong to imitate Mr. Obama’s mistakes in the matter of the Sotomayor nomination.”

In other words, Senate Democrats like Obama politicized the process by objecting to qualified nominees, but Senate Republicans should forsake that tactic. The Post editors are calling, in effect, for a form of unilateral disarmament.

Keep in mind, this attitude went well beyond Obama. Twenty-two Democrats voted against Roberts, 40 voted against Sam Alito, out of 44 (45 if you count Jim Jeffords, then-nominal-independent from Vermont.) There’s at least as much to object to in Sotomayor’s record as there is in Alito’s or Roberts’s. It’s unreasonable for the Post to expect Senate Republicans to sign off on a nominee where there are legitimate questions for the sake of a one-sided comity.