Liberals should thank the Republican senators who've said they'll vote this week against confirming Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the next justice of the Supreme Court.

Perhaps unwittingly, they are freeing Barack Obama to go for the liberal candidate of his dreams next time around. They're also alienating millions of Hispanic voters who think it's long past time one of their own was seated on the high court, but that's another subject.

If these lawmakers are going to balk at someone whose judicial record is so squarely centrist (remember, she was appointed to the federal bench by the first President Bush) then Mr. Obama should feel free to ignore them if another opening occurs. He's not going to win them over anyway short of picking Karl Rove, so why waste energy trying?

There's only one way for the president to tip the balance of the court if he gets the chance, and that's by having the courage of his convictions. The numbers say he can afford them.

Democrats have a 58-40 majority in the Senate, plus two independents who vote with them. It only takes 51 votes to confirm. Clarence Thomas, after all, was approved by a narrow margin, but his vote carries as much weight as that of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose approval was nearly unanimous.

In other words, bring on Anita Hill and to hell with 'em! Kidding, but barely.

Ms. Sotomayor is all but certain to be confirmed this week, with or without GOP votes, not only because she's so obviously qualified, but also because she revealed as little as possible about her thinking during the hearings.

This is what we've come to in the post-Bork age, where the process has devolved into a nearly content-free exercise. Everyone knows the script and goes through the motions as if it were Kabuki theater.

Senators try to get nominees to reveal how they would vote on certain hot-button issues. Nominees offer non-responsive responses to frustrate those attempts. The more specific the questions, the more general the answers.

So we get nominees saying they will "apply the law," as if there is nothing subjective about its interpretation, and that they will "follow precedent," as if precedent is not set by the court itself.

The real goal of this thrust-and-parry is not to bring to light anything useful about the nominees; everyone knows they're going to stonewall. The real goal is for senators to grandstand for their constituents. Supporters shower the nominees with accolades and opponents try to trip them up.

As for the nominees, their goal is to avoid mistakes. And the best way to do that is (a) say as little of substance as possible, or (b) ramble on and on with so much pointless verbiage that the panel forgets the question or loses interest in the answer (see Samuel Alito, who nearly put the committee to sleep, and whose blather was rivaled only by Joe Biden's questions).

The result is that nominees can only be judged by what they've said and how they've ruled in the past, before they were so acutely on their guard.

This explains why conservatives have latched onto Ms. Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment, even though she's done her best to disavow it.

It's too bad she felt the need to do that. The statement was a true and honest reflection of her belief that who we are and what we come from influences how we think. Conservatives profess to have found this shocking, which is hilarious. If anybody thinks John Roberts' rulings aren't influenced by his millionaire milieu, then I've got some Bernie Madoff investments to sell them.

This is not to say that background pre-ordains the outcome, only that it is one of the things that informs a person's opinions. Justices who seemed one way have moved dramatically in the other directions once seated. Hugo Black, for example, who sat on the court from 1937 to 1971, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in his youth, but he went on to become the court's bellwether liberal.

Equally silly is conservative umbrage over Mr. Obama's desire to appoint a justice who understands how the court's rulings affect the average citizen. This, apparently, runs counter to the concept of "strict constructionism," wherein judges are supposed to interpret the Constitution as if we were all living in the 1700s. Ah, yes -- slavery, indentured servitude, women as chattel, debtors prison -- those were the days.

It's a shame that Ms. Sotomayor couldn't have engaged her questioners on these issues, but engagement is now seen as the route to rejection. So instead of knowing what nominees think in general about corporate pay caps, banking and anti-trust regulation, privacy, equal protection, same-sex marriage and adoption, abortion, legalized marijuana or guns in schools, we have to guess.

That's a fine way to rip off suckers in Three Card Monty, but it's a hell of way to seat the highest court in the land.