Opportunity Knocking for the GOP?

This from Chris Cillizza seems like a big stretch to me:

Given the difficulties inherent in an all out attempt to block Sotomayor, is this nomination already a lost cause for Republicans? Not by a long shot.

If the ultimate goal for Republicans is to defeat Obama in 2012, then the Sotomayor pick presents them with a golden opportunity to cast the president as a traditional liberal — far from the post-partisan figure he was able to present to the American public in the 2008 election.

This seems questionable to me. Joshua Tucker’s call for people to bring his attention to political science research on the impact of Supreme Court confirmation fights on election outcomes hasn’t come up with anything yet. Nate Silver did a quick and dirty analysis suggesting that failed SCOTUS nominees are associated with a small downturn in presidential approval, and there’s no impact of successful confirmations. And of course it’s true that if some as-yet-hidden flaw with Sotomayor emerges that’s for some reason catastrophic enough to sink her confirmation, that would reflect poorly on Obama. But Republicans taking the opportunity to point out that Obama is nominating the kind of judges who Democrats nominate, strikes me as unlikely to dramatically alter anyone’s perception of anything.

By contrast, if conservatives continue to be unable to restrain themselves from loud whining about how society unfairly tilts the odds in favor of Puerto Rican girls growing up in housing projects in the Bronx, they’ll presumably continue their current trajectory of alienating Hispanic voters.