Loretta Lynch had them at Jim Crow.

Senate Republicans had delayed confirmation hearings for President Obama’s attorney general nominee until they took control of Congress — giving them a chance to use the nomination to protest Obama’s immigration policy and other actions by Obama and the outgoing attorney general, Eric Holder.

But those who figured they could take out their frustrations on Lynch had misjudged her: The nominee has a long and impressive résumé as a no-nonsense prosecutor, and she managed at Wednesday’s hearing to be both assertive and anodyne in her testimony, expert in the law but opaque about controversial legal matters. As important, Lynch, with the help of committee Democrats, painted an unassailable biography: This daughter of a fourth-generation minister and a segregation-fighting mother from the South would be the first African American woman to be the nation’s top law enforcement official.

The case against Lynch deflated faster than if the New England Patriots had run the hearing.