Washington ? Despite the heated response by a group of liberal Democrats to Judge Samuel Alito’s Supreme Court nomination, opponents would face long odds in killing his chances to join the court with a filibuster.

Interviews with moderate Republican and Democratic senators Tuesday indicated that most do not expect to find anything so alarming in his record or background to merit such a drastic parliamentary tactic. At worst, many said that they would like to wait and see how Alito fares during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on his nomination.

President Bush’s choice of Alito on Monday was greeted with dismay by several senior Democrats with sway over Senate opinion – Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. Leahy called the nomination “needlessly provocative” and Schumer warned that it would divide the country.

But so far, their warnings have not sparked a bandwagon effect in opposition to Alito.

“There’s not going to be a filibuster,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., flatly declared, urging her colleagues to wait for the vetting process and the hearings to take place.

And Feinstein, a member of the Judiciary Committee, chastised the special interest groups on both sides of the ideological divide for engaging in “intense hype” with television commercials and heated rhetoric over the nomination.

“On both sides, there is a desire to go to war,” Feinstein complained. “Something inside me really rebels against that.”