As he cast his vote in favor of Samuel Alito today, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham asked, "What did you expect President Bush to do when he won?"

It's a fair question, we suppose, just not a particularly relevant one in the context of how senators vote on Alito's nomination. Yes, George W. Bush made it clear as a candidate that he'd appoint Supreme Court justices "in the mold" of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. By nominating Alito, the president has pretty plainly kept that promise. He has picked a man who has said that he personally believes "very strongly" that there's no right to an abortion in the U.S. Constitution, who won't say whether he still thinks that way, and who dances around the question of whether Roe v. Wade is settled law but hints -- with the code words "inexorable command" -- that he thinks that it's not.

So yes, Sen. Graham, Samuel Alito is pretty much what we expected from Bush. That means that people who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004 maybe ought to ask themselves today if they weighed things correctly then. If you want to see abortion rights protected -- as a substantial majority of the American public does -- but you voted for Bush because you really liked your tax cuts or you thought Bush would keep you safe or you just didn't trust John Kerry, well, how are you feeling today? Was the trade-off worth it? What did you expect President Bush to do when he won?

Those are fair questions to put to Bush supporters today. But as we said, we have a hard time seeing how they have much of a bearing on the way Democrats ought to vote on Alito's nomination. It's probably safe to assume that neither Patrick Leahy nor Joe Biden nor Ted Kennedy nor Dianne Feinstein voted for Bush. They knew what to expect from him, and they didn't like it. Neither did their constituents, which explains a lot about why Leahy and Biden and Kennedy and Feinstein keep getting reelected and why Vermont and Delaware and Massachusetts and California stayed blue in 2004.