What if they had a nomination battle and nobody came?

The central lesson to take from this NY Times story is that liberals and other Democrats are refusing to play the part of The Wacko Left in the John Roberts nomination drama.

"General" Ed Gillespie (and, where on earth did that picture come from?) has lots of troops ready to fight, but no enemy.

The Times reports from the White House War Room:

Some war room: the telephones were silent, Fox News was unwatched in a corner, no aides bustled in and out. With Congress gone for another sultry weekend, it was just Mr. Gillespie and his sidekick, Steve Schmidt, a top adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney who is moonlighting as the communications director in the Roberts sales campaign.

What do the two do all day?

"There are meetings punctuated by brief periods of nonmeetings," said Mr. Gillespie, who has temporarily vacated his office in his lucrative downtown lobbying firm, Quinn Gillespie & Associates.

This, after such Democratic and/or liberal partisans as Sen. Harry Reid described Roberts has having "suitable legal credentials;" and, Planned Parenthood's Karen Pearl told Joe Scarborough that she hoped Judge Roberts would be respectful of privacy and women's health.

This kind of mild rhetoric deprives GOP bomb-throwers of their targets.