But Diamond remains held up in the Senate confirmation process for a Federal Reserve seat, due to the objections of Republican senators over his qualifications. Again, they have questions about whether Diamond, who once taught Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke economics and now has won a Nobel prize, is qualified.

Here’s Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) on Diamond this summer: “I do not believe he’s ready to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board. I do not believe that the current environment of uncertainty would benefit from monetary policy decisions made by board members who are learning on the job.”

Elena Kagan was confirmed to the Supreme Court Thursday in a 63-37 Senate vote. (Pete Marovich/ZUMApress.com)

After a sleepy confirmation process drowned out by debates over financial regulation, unemployment insurance, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Senate this afternoon confirmed Elena Kagan as the next Supreme Court justice, by a vote of 63 to 37.

[Law1] Five Senate Republicans — Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Judd Gregg (N.H.), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Dick Lugar (Ind.) and Susan Collins (Maine) — crossed the aisle to support Kagan as the successor to Justice John Paul Stevens. One Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson (Neb.), opposed the confirmation.

When Kagan was first announced as the next nominee to the Supreme Court, Republicans promised to mount a strong resistance to the legal scholar, then dean of Harvard Law School. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) cited Kagan’s lack of judicial experience and past positions in the Clinton and Obama administration as roadblocks, calling her “someone who has worked tirelessly to advance a political agenda.”

Republicans also raised questions about Kagan’s role in barring military recruiters from Harvard’s campus. Kagan held that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — the military policy letting gay and lesbian officers remain in service if they remain in the closet — violated the school’s anti-discrimination policies.

Many were also taken aback by Kagan’s previous mocking of the Senate’s Supreme Court confirmation process itself. In an article published in the University of Chicago Law Review, Kagan had once criticized the nomination process as having become a “vapid and hollow charade.” (One could reasonably describe Kagan’s own confirmation hearings as “vapid and hollow,” at least at times. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), for instance, asked Kagan about the “Twilight” books and films.)

Despite Kagan’s quiet confirmation hearings, she earned five fewer Senate votes than Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who gained confirmation exactly one year ago today. Numerous political observers chalked up Republican dissent to increased political polarization leading up to a hard fought midterm election in November.

When Kagan is confirmed, the Supreme Court will for the first time in its history have three female justices. (Sotomayor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg are the others.) “It took nearly 200 years before the Court welcomed Sandra Day O’Connor as its first woman, and more than a decade longer before Ruth Bader Ginsburg would join her as its second,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said today, lauding the confirmation. “That’s progress. It’s not yet completely equitable in a nation where women represent more than half the population, but it’s progress.”

Reid also took a moment to praise Kagan’s advocacy on behalf of individual citizens in an era of outsize corporate influence — an oblique jab at the current court’s decision in Citizens United and other pro-business cases.

“We need a voice on the Supreme Court who remembers and reveres the rights of individuals — not because people are always right and corporations are always wrong — but because the argument of even the poorest citizen should be heard just as loudly, with the same patience and with the same impartiality as that of the richest firm,” Reid said. “Elena Kagan has demonstrated time and again that she understands that, too.”

Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), a moderate Republican who some had expected to vote for Kagan, announced shortly before the vote that he would oppose her. “The best umpires, to use the popular analogy, must not only call balls and strikes, but also have spent enough time on the playing field to know the strike zone,” Brown said in a statement today. “Therefore, I cannot support Elena Kagan’s nomination.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), on the other hand, announced in late July that he would support President Obama’s choice of Kagan, all but guaranteeing a primary challenge in 2014 from outraged conservatives in his home state of South Carolina. “She will serve this nation honorably,” Graham said in July. “It would not have been someone I would have chosen but the person who did choose, President Obama, did choose wisely.”

But Republicans, it seems, are feeling very lucky. So much so that they plan to use the upcoming confirmation fight over Dr. Donald Berwick, Obama’s nominee to run Medicare and Medicaid, to continue the argument against health care reform:

Hospital executives who have worked with Dr. Berwick describe him as a visionary, inspiring leader.

But a battle has erupted over his nomination, suggesting that Dr. Berwick faces a long uphill struggle to win Senate confirmation.  Republicans are using the nomination to revive their arguments against the new health care law, which they see as a potent issue in this fall’s elections, and Dr. Berwick has given them plenty of ammunition.

The GOP is going to win seats this November regardless of the arguments they use, but I think they’ll be surprised at how unreceptive voters are to the repeal language, especially as the more popular provisions come into effect. Indeed, the most recent poll on the Affordable Care Act’s popularity — an Associated Press-GfK poll released last week — shows growing support for the bill. And as November approaches, and Democrats begin to sell their accomplishments, it’s likely that support will continue to increase.

At TAPPED, Tim Fernholz predicts a “brutal” confirmation fight for Orszag’s successor, and I’m inclined to agree. It’s not that Obama will nominate someone from outside the mainstream — if this list of potential nominees is any indication, Obama is likely to choose a moderate with establishment-friendly credentials — it’s that Republicans are likely to approach any nominee as if he or she were the Soviet Union, resurrected and personified. After all, as Fernholz notes, growing concerns over government spending and deficits make this fight the perfect opportunity for partisan posturing and grandstanding. The OMB director is a bit too high-profile for Republicans to stall confirmation proceedings endlessly (as they’ve done with other offices), but given the clear incentives in favor of delay — obstruction eats up floor time and makes the president look weak going into midterms — I wouldn’t be surprised if this goes on for much longer than the day it took to confirm Orszag.

Video after the jump:

Today’s Kagan files are broken up with headings sure to appeal to GOP lawmakers and aides eagerly awaiting a “smoking gun”-type revelation that could complicate her upcoming confirmation hearings. More than a dozen bundles of files deal with abortion, and another half-dozen touch on gun ownership issues.

But at least one Senate Republican didn’t need to wait for this afternoon’s Kagan documents to draw his own conclusions.

In a morning statement, Judiciary Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said the nominee’s memos from her clerkship under the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall reflect “a leftist philosophy and an approach to the law that seems more concerned with achieving a desired social result than fairly following the Constitution.”

Sessions continued:

Ms. Kagan has never been a judge, and only briefly practiced law—spending far more time as a liberal advocate than a legal practitioner. Given this thin legal resume, her candid memos as a Supreme Court clerk arguably provide some of the best insight into how she would rule as a Supreme Court Justice. These troubling memos have to be carefully examined, and it is now doubly important that the White House fully produce the overdue documents from the Clinton Library in order to shed further light on the philosophy Ms. Kagan would bring to the bench.

It’s enough to make one wonder if Sessions, who requested Kagan’s Clinton-era files two weeks ago, knew what would come just hours after his statement was made. The Alabama Republican has vowed to hold up Kagan’s scheduled June 28 confirmation hearing in the Judiciary panel “unless the files were produced in time for senators to peruse them well in advance,” according to the AP.

Our country is still facing an economic crisis and while I appreciate the service that Chairman Bernanke has performed as Federal Reserve Chairman, I believe that he must be held accountable for many of the decisions that contributed to our financial meltdown.

Therefore, I plan to oppose Chairman Ben Bernanke’s confirmation for a new term as Federal Reserve Chairman.

What’s unclear: Whether McCain knows whether Bernanke’s confirmation is already a go. His colleague Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who is not up for re-election this year, is backing Bernanke.

“I did not closely follow the Sonia Sotomayor nomination,” said Fiorina. “I was battling breast cancer. But I probably would have voted for Sotomayor. She seemed qualified.”