The Democrats are apparently going to put up a fight against the nomination of John Bolton:

Although Democrats have challenged a number of diplomatic nominees, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “they see this nomination as more distasteful, and they’re more united,” said one Democratic Senate aide.

The split on the panel is one of several signs that the proceedings, set for April 7, could be acrimonious.

Advocates have organized letter and ad campaigns for and against Bolton. Democrats said they intended to investigate Bolton’s comments on a variety of issues, an exercise that Republicans said could stretch the hearing into a second day. Republicans said they were concerned that Democrats might attempt to filibuster the nomination if it reached the Senate floor.

Bolton, undersecretary of State for arms control, is controversial because of his criticism of the United Nations and other international institutions and agreements.

“He’s been contemptuous of the U.N.,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record) (D-Calif.). “There’s a lot to talk about at this hearing. It’s going to be very contentious.”

I think they’re misreading the mood of the public, and setting themselves up for an Ollie North moment, in which the witness makes fools of them. Bolton will have two messages: 1) the UN is very badly broken, and he will lay out all the evidence for that, from Darfur to Oil-for-Palaces to child sex rings among the “peacekeepers, with a Secretary General who is either incompetent, corrupt, or incompetently corrupt, and defiantly unwilling to step down; and 2) that his job is to reform it, not wreck it, something that cannot be done without a clear recognition of its many problems. In their own blind transnationalist love for the UN as they’d like to fantasize it, rather than as it is, the Donkeys are going to end up looking like defenders of the status quo, and I suspect that this will be quite obvious to anyone watching the hearings. This will not be a smart political move for them.