Sen. Lindsey Graham emerged from a June meeting with Judge Sonia Sotomayor pining for the days when a Supreme Court nominee could attract overwhelming bipartisan support.

Graham cited Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Antonin Scalia , who was confirmed by a vote of 98-0 in 1986, and Bill Clinton’s nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsburg , confirmed by 96-3 in 1993.

“What happened to those days?” asked Graham, R-S.C. “That’s not the Senate I’ve been part of. I would like to go back to that, but I live in a world where it may be very difficult to do that.”

Now, two months later, Graham is among just six Republican senators who have announced plans to support Sotomayor as the Senate on Tuesday begins to debate her nomination on the floor.

Twenty-seven Republicans have come out against her nomination, while seven remained publicly undecided as of Monday evening.

But even if no additional Republicans vote for Sotomayor, she would still receive more cross-party support than Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. did in 2006, though far less than Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. received the previous year.

The Sotomayor nomination is the latest in the increasingly partisan battle over judicial nominations, including lower-court nominations. And the way Republicans have largely united against Sotomayor signals trouble for President Obama’s future Supreme Court nominations should Democrats lose seats in the midterm elections.

Certainly, partisan fighting over Supreme Court nominees has a longer history than Graham’s halcyon account in June suggested. Scalia sailed through the Senate in part because Democrats focused their fire at the time on Justice William H. Rehnquist’s elevation to chief justice.

In 1987, Democrats sank Judge Robert H. Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court after denouncing his conservative judicial philosophy. Two decades earlier, Republicans joined with conservative Southern Democrats to scuttle President Lyndon B. Johnson’s attempt to elevate Justice Abe Fortas to chief justice in 1968.

But the way Democrats — including Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois — handled the Roberts and Alito nominations only deepened the ill will.

Obama was one of 25 Senate Democrats who unsuccessfully attempted to filibuster Alito’s nomination. And he made clear that he opposed Alito and Roberts on the basis of their ideology.

Republicans have expressed no interest in trying to filibuster Sotomayor’s nomination, an effort that would be certain to fail, given Democrats’ large majority in the Senate. As a result, few Republicans feel any need to give the benefit of the doubt to Obama’s nominee. And they have made Sotomayor’s ideology the focus of their criticism.

Arguments Against Sotomayor