Before today's round of Estrada nomination discussions begin, let me just say that there are only two possible positions with respect to ideology and nominations: either no one should take it into account (i.e., neither President nor Senators), or everyone gets to. Seldon Goldman's account of nominations under Reagan show, for example, that the ideological vetting of federal judicial nominees was widespread in the Reagan White House. But it surely didn't start there. The difficulty in the Senate right now is that very few people are arguing that they have a right to engage in questioning the President's real motives for nominating Estrada (here's a hint: it's not his well-touted, neutral sounding professional qualifications alone). In fact, if Bush had his way, the internal memoranda that reveal the presidential process here may not ever be available. So we have an agenda-setting problem here: Bush has set the agenda and the Senators are now in the position of responding with the institutional means at their disposal. And Bush has been very skillful at wielding the partisanship accusation hammer.