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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The Senate has affirmed that Judge Sotomayor has the intellect, the temperament, the history, the integrity, and the independence of mind to ably serve on our nation's highest court.

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WALLACE: That was President Obama this afternoon commanding the Senate after it voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic justice to the Supreme Court.

We're back now with our panel. So let's put up the numbers that he show how Sonia Sotomayor did, and we'll show you in comparison to the two previous Supreme Court nominees.

You see she got 68 yea votes, 31 nays, and the 68 yeas included nine Republicans who voted for her.

Now let's look at Sam Alito and John Roberts. Alito got 58 yeas including only four Democratic votes. Roberts, Chief Justice John Roberts got 78 votes, including 22 Democratic votes. So, Steve Hayes, it looks like that Sonia Sotomayor got a little bit better bipartisan support than Alito but not nearly as much as Roberts.

HAYES: Right. And sort of that's the trend. If you look historically really going back 15 years, 20 years, you can see that Republicans generally defer to Democratic president picks and stage less ferocious confirmation hearings than Democrats have.

What's interesting to me in this case, Republicans, I think, questioned her aggressively but respectfully. I don't think anyone would say she had a difficult confirmation process. But at the end, they voted in numbers greater they have historically in opposition to her nomination.

I think there were two reasons. One of them was substantive reason. She sounded like a federalist society board member when she was actually testifying in the hearings. She sounded like, you know, a conservative, a strict constructionist. But her history of speeches, mainly, some of her decisions suggest that she is not that certainly. And then two, I think Republicans, for Republicans, this is something they will go back and they'll be judged on as conservatives wanted to have been on the opposite side.

The politics ran both ways, Jennifer, because on the one hand, as Steve suggests, voting for what I think they believe to be a liberal justice could end up hurting them - excuse me - with their conservative base.

On the other hand, and you had some Senate Democrats, especially New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez saying, that Hispanics won't forget that the GOP voted three to one, 31-9, against Sotomayor.

Is there a fallout? Republicans have had troubles with the Hispanic vote over the last four years. Is there trouble that they voted in such numbers against a Hispanic Supreme Court justice?

LOVEN: Well, I think we'll have to find out. I think it's hard to tell at this point whether they suffer for those votes. My guess is no, and that's probably the reason that they made the calculation they did to vote against her in such large numbers.

There is a sense that this whole confirmation process, and the voting as well is, a little bit about road test, a practice, if you will, because - Steve described some Republicans' problems with Judge Sotomayor. And in essence, that's a problem with Obama's empathy qualification that he's looking for in a judge.

And I think they wanted to do is sort of practice their argument against that for the next time when his pick of the justice actually could change the ideological balance on the court, which it is not now.

WALLACE: You know, Jeff, you talk about this whole process. I mean, it seems to me that Sonia Sotomayor, as she presented herself in the court, was almost identical - I not talking about her speeches or decisions, but as she presented herself during the confirmation hearings was almost identical to Alito and Roberts. They all kind of said nothing.

Is there a better way to do this?

BIRNBAUM: Not in the modern era where these nomination hearings are warfare. This was relatively modern relative warfare. The next time will be trench warfare. It will be a bloodbath, because then the makeup of the court and its substantive findings might very well be changed.

Not in this case. She is substituting for Justice Souter, who is liberal. In fact, in some ways she may be more conservative because she is pro-business. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually supported this nomination. But no, until things change, there will never be real answers coming from a nominee for the Supreme Court.