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WaPo: GOP Vote Against Sotomayor May Alienate Hispanics
The Washington Post says the 28 GOP Senators voting against Sotomayor run the risk of alienating Hispanic voters — I say good for them.
The Republican party should leave the identity politics to the left. Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy is not appropriate for the highest court in the land. Moreover, she’s just not that bright.
Republicans who allow Sotomayor’s gender and ethnicity to influence their vote are a disgrace. The SCOTUS should be reserved for the best and brightest our country has to offer regardless of their gender or ethnicity.
The left pretends to be so race conscious while at the same time using race as a basis for making pretty much every decision.
The best way to create racial harmony is to ignore race and promote the best qualified people to do the job.
Liberals automatically assume that America’s Hispanic population will be angry at the GOP’s rejection of Sotomayor, which is itself a racist conclusion to come to.
It’s reminiscent of Barbara Boxer’s assumption that all black people support her phony global warming theories and her cap and tax plan.
Anyone who thinks the GOP is voting against Sotomayor because she’s a woman or a Latina is a nut and doesn’t belong in the Republican party anyway.
The idea that certain people should be automatically supported because of their gender or ethnicity is just another form of racism and Republicans should have nothing to do with it.
Sotomayor Brings Diversity, Mediocrity To The Supreme Court
The Washington Post has an a very good piece from Richard Cohen today about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Cohen says what most of us recognize to be true. That Obama chose “diversity” over intellect by picking Sotomayor.
She’s an average judge with an average intellect who admittedly used her gender and ethnicity to get to the top.
Don’t get me wrong. She is fully qualified. She is smart and learned and experienced and, in case you have not heard, a Hispanic, female nominee, of whom there have not been any since the dawn of our fair republic. But she has no cause, unless it is not to make a mistake, and has no passion, unless it is not to show any, and lacks intellectual brilliance, unless it is disguised under a veil of soporific competence until she takes her seat on the court. We shall see.
In the meantime, Sotomayor will do, and will do very nicely, as a personification of what ails the American left. She is, as everyone has pointed out, in the mainstream of American liberalism, a stream both intellectually shallow and preoccupied with the past. We have a neat summary of it in the recent remarks of Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), who said he wanted a Supreme Court justice “who will continue to move the court forward in protecting . . . important civil rights.” He cited the shooting of a gay youth, the gang rape of a lesbian and the murder of a black man — in other words, violence based on homophobia and racism. Yes. But who nowadays disagrees?
Sotomayor is no doubt qualified, but let’s not pretend she’s the most qualified. The president chose to make a cynical affirmative action pick to placate his radical left-wing base instead of choosing the best person for the job.
Video: Stuart Smalley Discusses ‘Perry Mason’ With Sotomayor
I still can’t believe this clown is really a senator. How ridiculous is this?
(hat tip Breitbart TV)
Video: Lindsey Graham Questions Sotomayor
Here’s a short clip of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s questioning of Sonia Sotomayor today:
(hat tip Breitbart TV)
Sotomayor Is Member Of ‘La Raza’
According to WorldNetDaily, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a member of the controversial Hispanic organization known as “La Raza” which promotes amnesty and open border policies.
I can’t imagine this could be much of a shock to anyone that she would be a member of that group.
As I said yesterday, republicans should vigorously make their case against her to the American people based on her long record of judicial activism.
The area we should steer clear of is in talking about stuff like this. The democrats are going to hammer the fact that she’s a Latina, blah, blah, blah.
For us to take the bait and start talking about her membership in La Raza is inevitably going to escalate until something is said that offends Hispanics and the democrats are going to jump on it.
Obama chose this woman because of her race and her gender. Republicans need to talk about her record and leave the phony identity politics to the democrats.
Let’s stay focused on her judicial activism and save the immigration debates for another time.
-Chris Jones
Minorities Only Count If They’re Liberal
If there’s one thing liberals love it’s identity politics. They play it at every opportunity and they play it well.
Since president Obama named judge Sonia Sotomayor as his choice for the supreme court, liberals have been cooing about her rise from the inner city and everything she had to overcome, blah, blah, blah.
Liberals love to name “firsts” and then constantly remind republicans that they’re naming a “first” and then dare them to oppose that “first.”
One must be careful not to get too carried away criticizing the first black president. Criticism could well be interrupted as racism and nobody wants that!
By the same token, Obama chose Sotomayor because in the mind of democrats (and sadly most republicans) opposing the first Hispanic woman to the court is dangerous ground and should be done with extreme caution.
Liberals aren’t actually interested in diversity, they’re interested in using the pursuit of diversity as a weapon.
When naming the first woman or minority to a particular position, if democrats cannot in some way benefit from it they don’t talk about it or pretend it didn’t happen.
Justice Clarence Thomas is a prime example of this. Because he’s not a radical leftist nothing he does counts for anything in the eyes of most liberals and more importantly most blacks.
Sen. Claire McCaskill made the stunning claim yesterday on Fox News that Obama’s nomination of Sotomayor was important, because no one currently on the court comes from an impoverished background. “That’s something new,” she added.
I suspect that was the moment Justice Clarence Thomas kicked his TV over. Not only is Thomas a black man sitting on the Supreme Court (appointed by a republican), but he comes from the poorest background imaginable.
In his memoirs, Thomas recounts a childhood of poverty that judge Sotomayor could not in her wildest dreams imagine. She grew up like royalty compared to the adversity that Thomas faced.
McCaskill’s claim is one of the most ignorant statements ever uttered. But it speaks to the larger point that in McCaskill’s eyes and in the eyes of most liberals Sotomayor really would be the first.
Clarence Thomas is a black conservative which makes him both an enemy to democrats and an enemy to most blacks.
What he believes and what he’s accomplished in life mean nothing. As far as most liberals are concerned there is no black man on the Supreme Court.
You see the same kind of treatment when it comes to Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.
Colin Powell was the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the first black Secretary of State, but did you ever hear the media cooing about that? Nope. Never.
Did you get a chance to read all those columns in the NY Times during the last eight years about what a progressive guy Bush was for putting so many black people in positions of power? Me either, I’m still trying to find them.
Had he been a democrat appointed by a democrat you would hear about it ad nauseam for years even decades to come.
Dr. Condoleezza Rice who herself came from very impoverished beginnings in the south when racism was at its very worst.
Rice was the first black national security adviser and a woman to boot. She went on to be the first black female Secretary of State. Once again, did you hear the media gushing about any of that? Not just no, but hell no!
Like Powell, she’s a republican appointed to a position of power by republicans. Therefore, those “firsts” don’t count. Like Clarence Thomas, Rice and Powell are also heretics and enemies of both democrats (Powell not so much lately) and most blacks.
Think about how significant it is that both of president Bush’s Secretary of State picks were African-American. I don’t remember ever reading a column or magazine article applauding president Bush for appointing so many minorities to his cabinet. You can imagine the books, movies, documentaries, and monuments that would have been created to honor a democratic president for doing the exact same thing.
It’s interesting that the party most often labeled “racist” is also the party that has put more minorities in positions of power. Unlike democrats, this wasn’t done to make a political statement they were simply the best people for the job.
Republicans should not bow to political correctness on Sonia Sotomayor. They should ignore her ethnicity and gender (no matter how many times liberals bring it up) and focus on her judicial record.
It’s pointless to fret about being called a racist, because liberals are always going to call throw that bomb around no matter what.
If you’re a republican and you dare to question a liberal you WILL be labeled racist, sexist, homophobe, bigot, hatemonger, and any combination of those. Get over it.
I believe the American people by and large can see through the race baiting and identity politics the democrats so often play.
The important thing is for republicans to challenge Sotomayor’s record and show the American people why judicial activists like her are bad for the country.
There’s little doubt that Sotomayor will eventually be confirmed. However, republicans can still count it as a win if they present an effective case to the public about why she’s a judicial activist and what that means for them.
The most important thing for republicans to remember is that by not engaging on issues the democrats have labeled as racially sensitive it only make things worse.
Playing the race and gender card has been such a success for democrats over the years that they’re using it more and more.
Republicans need to aggressively make their case and let the chips fall where they may.
-Chris Jones
Obama Picks Sotomayor
President Obama announced today that federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor is his choice to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court.
Here’s what the AP has about her:
Sotomayor is a self-described "Newyorkrican" who grew up in a Bronx housing project after her parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico. She has dealt with diabetes since age 8 and lost her father at age 9, growing up under the care of her mother in humble surroundings. As a girl, inspired by the Perry Mason television show, she knew she wanted to be a judge.
A graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, a former prosecutor and private attorney, Sotomayor became a federal judge for the Southern District of New York in 1992.
As a judge, she has a bipartisan pedigree. She was first appointed by a Republican, President George H.W. Bush, then named an appeals judge by President Bill Clinton in 1997.
At her Senate confirmation hearing more than a decade ago, she said, "I don’t believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it."
In one of her most memorable rulings as federal district judge, Sotomayor essentially salvaged baseball in 1995, ruling with players over owners in a labor strike that had led to the cancellation of the World Series.
As an appellate judge, she sided with the city of New Haven, Conn., in a discrimination case brought by white firefighters after the city threw out results of a promotion exam because two few minorities scored high enough. Ironically, that case is now before the Supreme Court.
Just because she was first appointed by President George H.W. Bush doesn’t mean she has a “bipartisan pedigree” like the AP claims.
Make no mistake about it, Sotomayor is a liberal through and through. One only has to look at her judicial record to know this.
She’ll be a reliable tool of labor unions (like our president) and will rule in favor of minorities not because they have the best legal case but because she has “empathy.”
Having said all that, Obama can nominate anyone he wants and at this moment in time Republicans can do little to stand in the way.
All things considered Obama could have picked someone much worse. Sotomayor is not going to change the balance of the court so it’s really not that big a deal.
It’s the next SCOTUS pick that’s going to change the game.
As liberal as Sotomayor is, I suspect Obama’s next pick is going to make her seem to the right of Scalia.
-Chris Jones
New Republic: Sotomayor May Not Be Liberal Enough For Supreme Court
The New Republic makes the case that president Obama should be careful about appointing Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
According to TNR, she may not be liberal enough. The far left is concerned that she may not be strong enough to move the court “in a different direction.”
Sounds like the kind of judge republicans should get behind. She may turn out to be the lesser of many evils.
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