From an AP story about the Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Alito's nomination:

And Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., warned that Republicans would remember the party-line Alito vote in future Supreme Court nominations, considering several Republicans voted for Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who were nominated by President Clinton.

“It is simply unrealistic to think that one party would put itself at a disadvantage by eschewing political considerations while the other party almost unanimously applies such considerations,” Kyl said. “So I say to my Democratic friends: Think carefully about what is being done today. Its impact will be felt well beyond this particular nominee.”

So Kyl says that Democrats shouldn't vote along their party lines on a contentious, out-of-the-mainstream nominee for a lifetime appointment because, basically, "turnabout is fair play." It's kind of funny that this is a guy who extols the virtues of the nuclear option as though his party will always be in the majority.

Sweet poetic justice would be a filibuster of Alito, triggering the Republicans to initiate the nuclear option, which is overwhelmingly unpopular, leading them to lose their majority in the Senate in November, leading them to having to function in a Democratically-controlled Senate with no option to fillibuster future Democratic judicial appointments to which they object and would oppose along party lines.

I won't even touch his faux-altruism about "escewing political considerations".