Your meme du jour in four flavors. Krauthammer makes the case to the base that this isn’t worth a war; Noonan makes the case to Senate Republicans that it’s a golden opportunity for gravitas; Cornyn makes the case to Limbaugh and Gingrich that throwing grenades about racism isn’t helping; and Steele makes the case to, er, whoever Steele imagines his audience is. For all the sound and fury over a conservative split on how hard to hit Sotomayor, the differences between the two camps signify practically nothing. The Noonan camp isn’t saying she shouldn’t be pressed on her “wise Latina” and “courts make policy” comments, they’re merely asking the GOP to avoid unnecessarily inflammatory lines of attack. (See Andy McCarthy’s musings about Sotomayor as a potential juror for one clever, non-inflammatory possibility.) The real fault line between the two sides is whether the GOP should filibuster, but that’s not worth debating since it’ll never, ever happen. Even if Snowe and Collins shock the world by voting no, McCain will be wary of alienating Arizona’s Hispanic voters ahead of his reelection bid. She’s going to be confirmed. The only question is whether the GOP can use the confirmation process as a tutorial on the defects of liberal jurisprudence without getting bogged down in debating whether she’s a racist or not.

If you missed Noonan’s op-ed about this today, don’t treat the video clip as a fair substitute or else you’ll miss her all but declaring that right-wing blog readers are a conservative nutroots. Heart-ache. Click the images to watch.