I'm still looking for signs that President Barack Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court will split the right. Earlier, I reported that conservative strategist Grover Norquist was happy with Obama's choice because it has united conservatives in opposition. Longtime rightwing poohbah Richard Viguerie has said the same thing, and he's been calling for an anti-Sotomayor crusade. But so far Senate Republicans and Michael Steele, chair of the GOP, have refrained from beating any anti-Sotomayor drums. And that means Norquist, Viguerie and the conservatives could end up being disappointed if Senate GOPers decide not to go after the first Latina nominated to the highest court.

In an email, I asked Norquist if he thought the Senate Republicans share his enthusiasm for opposing her. His response surprised me a little. He wrote:

In criticizing Barack Obama's national security speech, my fellow CQPolitics.com blogger Bill Pascoe argues that the president has lost the Gitmo debate. He writes:

Obama was explaining, in a defensive posture, how it was that he found himself whipsawed between, on the one hand, a MoveOn.org Left that wanted Gitmo burned to the ground the moment he took his hand off the Bible, and, on the other, a Congress that wanted no part of explaining to its constituents why their local jail might be fortified to hold Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

I don't deny that Obama has had a difficult week. But that's largely because GOPers and Dick Cheney were being successful demagogues and fear-mongerers. When they whip up the anxieties of constituents about bringing KSM and other bad guys into the United States, they are being disingenuous.

Not many topics are more prone to demagoguery than national security. Conservatives have been decrying the Obama administration's recent announcement--made by Defense Secretary Bob Gates--that it will be slashing a few big-ticket items in the military budget.

The hawks claim that Gates is presiding over a dangerous cut in the Pentagon's budget. Actually, the military budget will still be increasing in these troubled economic times, and the United States will still be spending more on the military than every one of its present and potential rivals combined.

The folks at the National Security Network have put together a good take-down on all this. I'll quote it at length because this has not yet been posted, as far as I can tell:

It's always enjoyable when a senior government bureaucrat states the obvious--especially when it entails dissing a previous boss and complimenting a current one. On Meet the Press on Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked by host David Gregory "what's the difference between working for President Obama versus President Bush." Gates' reply:

SECRETARY GATES: I--that's--it's really hard to say. I think that, I think that probably President Obama is, is somewhat more analytical, and, and, he makes sure he hears from everybody in the room on an issue. And if they don't speak up, he calls on them.

MR. GREGORY: A marked difference from his predecessor?

SECRETARYY GATES: President Bush was interested in hearing different points of view but didn't go out of his way to make sure everybody spoke if they hadn't, if they hadn't spoken up before.

In other words, Obama is sincerely intellectually curious and wants to make sure he is not rendering decisions within a bubble of his own (or his advisers') making, while Bush was content to remain within his narrow comfort zone. Analysis? We don't need no stinkin' analysis.

No surprise here. Gates also raised the prospect of writing a book in which he would compare the different presidents he has worked for. It would be something if he could be truly forthcoming on that subject.

Here's the video:

In the past few weeks, I've been repeatedly asked by friends and acquaintances, "Well, what do you think of Obama's first appointments?" These various inquisitions gave me a chance to organize conflicting thoughts--which was fortunate, for The Washington Post's "Outlook" section asked me to contribute a piece on this question. The article will appear on the front page of the section on Sunday. But it's already been posted--old media meets new media--and here are some excerpts:

The more things change, the more they stay . . . well, you know. And looking at President-elect Barack Obama's top appointments, it's easy to wonder whether convention has triumphed over change -- and centrists over progressives.

A quick run-down: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who supported the Iraq war until she initiated her presidential bid, has been handed the Cabinet's big plum: secretary of state. And Bush's second defense secretary, Robert Gates, will become Obama's first defense secretary. The Obama foreign policy adviser regarded as the most liberal in his inner circle, Susan E. Rice, has been picked for the U.N. ambassador slot. Obama is elevating this job to Cabinet rank, but he's still sending Rice to New York -- and in politics and policy, proximity to power matters. For national security adviser, Obama has picked James L. Jones. The retired four-star general was not hawkish on the Iraq war and seems to be a non-ideologue who possesses the right experience for the job. But he probably would have ended up in a McCain administration, and his selection has not heartened progressives.

Obama's economic team isn't particularly liberal, either. Lawrence H. Summers, who as President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary opposed regulating the new-fangled financial instruments that greased the way to the subprime meltdown, will chair Obama's National Economic Council. To head Treasury, Obama has tapped Timothy F. Geithner, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, who helped oversee the financial system as it collapsed. Each is close to Robert Rubin, another former Clinton Treasury secretary, a director of bailed-out Citigroup and a poster boy for both the corporate wing of the Democratic Party and discredited Big Finance. Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board will be guided by Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman whose controversial tight-money policies ended the stagflation crisis of the 1970s but led to a nasty recession. (A genuinely progressive economist, Jared Bernstein, will receive a less prominent White House job: chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.)

It's no surprise that many progressives are -- depending on whom you ask -- disappointed, irritated or fit to be tied. Sure, Obama's appointments do represent change -- that is, change from the widely unpopular Bush-Cheney status quo. But do these appointments amount to the kind of change that progressives, who were an essential part of Obama's political base during the campaign, can really believe in?

Perhaps Obama is trying to pull off something subtle -- a sort of stealth liberalism draped in bipartisan centrism. But it's understandable that progressives are worried....

So with these hawkish, Rubin-esque, middle-of-the-road picks, has Obama abandoned the folks who brought him to the dance?

My hunch is that Obama has made a calculation. In constructing his administration, he has decided not to create a (liberal) Washington counter-establishment. Instead, he's fashioning a bipartisan, centrist-loaded version of the Washington establishment to carry out his policies, which do tilt to the left. (And good news for the establishmentarians: Having screwed up on Iraq or the economy is no disqualification.) When asked at a Nov. 26 news conference whether his appointments of old Washington hands indicated that his administration was not going to be a festival of change, Obama replied, "What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking. But understand where the -- the vision for change comes from first and foremost. It comes from me." His job, he added, was to "make sure . . . that my team is implementing" his policies. In other words, la change, c'est moi.....

For the moment, the watchword for progressives ought to be a version of an old Reagan trope: hope, but verify....

You can read the conclusion and the entire piece here.