Brilliant or stupid move?
There’s been a whispering campaign going on for months, and Fox News have been attacking her since March. Expect the GOP talking points for the rest of the week on that network.
On the other hand, since the GOP have preemptively announced their desire to block any nominee, they now have to take this fight public in order not to look like a bunch of pussies. But if they succeed in blocking Sotomayor, they may lose the Hispanic vote for good.
And the conservative meltdown has already begun. The comments on the article on our local paper’s website run the gamut from “Get ready for amnesty for illegal aliens” to “so long, white males, been nice knowing you!” As if one voice on the Supreme Court can accomplish all that.
I was watching her speech on Fox News. She’d barely finished speaking before they were lobbing complaints against her. This from the party that gave us Harriet Miers.
This guy nails it. the RNC meme is “liberal Harriet Miers”
From Scotusblog:
The White House will announce a Supreme Court nominee at 10 a.m. The Senate Judiciary Committee will likely hold hearings in the third week of July, permitting written committee questions the following week and a floor vote before Congress leaves for its summer recess on the weekend of August 8. Absent the discovery of an ethical transgression, the Democratic majority on the Senate guarantees confirmation, so the new Justice will take her seat when the Court opens its 2009 Term on October 5.
Well before the hearings and votes, the immediate struggle will be to define both the nominee and the President (in light of his selection). In several prior posts, we have summarized Sonia Sotomayor’s principal opinions. Here, I discuss the lines of attack that likely will be directed at her if she is nominated by the President this morning.
The attacks are inevitable and tremendously regrettable, just as they were for Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. A cottage industry – literally an industry, given the sums of money raised and spent – now exists in which the far left and right either brutalize or lionize the President’s nominees. Because the absence of controversy means bankruptcy, it has to be invented by both sides, whatever the cost to the nominee personally and to the integrity of the judiciary nationally.
That is not to say that there aren’t legitimate – in fact, critical – debates over issues like judicial philosophy and the proper way to interpret the Constitution that can and should be front and center in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. But the most extreme interest groups and ideologues are transparently uninterested in that reasoned debate as they rush to caricature the nominee and the opposing viewpoint.
Because proponents’ and opponents’ claims about nominees are provided for public consumption through the mass media, they involve bumper sticker messages; there is not much nuance. Almost always, they collapse into assertions of ideological extremism, as when some on the left attempted to portray John Roberts as a (secret) ideologue and single-minded tool of the government and corporations against individuals.
The public reaction to Roberts’ confirmation illustrates that Americans thankfully still think for themselves and that the White House’s most effective tool may be the nominee herself. But beyond a short statement at the announcement and fleeting remarks during courtesy visits to Senators, the nominee’s appearance at actual hearings won’t come for six weeks, which could be too late to repair her image if a sustained assault from the right actually took hold in the meantime. Controlling the narrative in the short-term will be essential.
I discuss below the four most probable lines of attack that committed ideologues are likely to advance, but to my mind basic political considerations make it very unlikely that mainstream Republican politicians will vocally join the criticism. The view of some that the nomination of Sotomayor will require the President to invest additional political capital seems completely wrong to me. Absent of course some ethical problem, the President simply has the votes.
Even more important, Republicans cannot afford to find themselves in the position of implicitly opposing Judge Sotomayor. To Hispanics, the nomination would be an absolutely historic landmark. It really is impossible to overstate its significance. The achievement of a lifetime appointment at the absolute highest levels of the government is a profound event for that community, which in turn is a vital electoral group now and in the future.
Equally significant for not only Hispanics but all Americans, Sotomayor has an extraordinarily compelling personal narrative. She grew up in a housing project, losing her father as an adolescent, raised (with her brother) by her mother, who worked as a nurse. She got herself to Princeton, graduating as one of the top two people in her class, then went to Yale Law. Almost all of her career has been in public service–as a prosecutor, trial judge, and now appellate judge. She has almost no money to her name.
For Republican Senators to come after Judge Sotomayor is not only hopeless when it comes to confirmation (something that did not deter Democrats in their attacks on Roberts and Alito) but a strategy that risks exacting a very significant political cost among Hispanics and independent voters generally, assuming that the attacks aren’t backed up with considerable substance.
Objectively, her qualifications are overwhelming from the perspective of ordinary Americans. She has been a prosecutor, private litigator, trial judge, and appellate judge. No one currently on the Court has that complete package of experience.
The most likely dynamic by far is the one that played out for Democrats with respect to Chief Justice Roberts. Democratic senators, recognizing the inevitable confirmation of a qualified and popular nominee, decided to hold their fire and instead direct their attacks to President Bush’s second nominee. Justice Alito was the collateral damage to that strategy. Here, with Justice Stevens’s retirement inevitable in the next few years, Republican senators are very likely to hold off conservative interest groups with promises to sharply examine President Obama’s second (potentially white male) nominee.
Overall, the White House’s biggest task is simply demonstrating that Judge Sotomayor is the most qualified candidate, not a choice based on her gender and ethnicity. The public wants to know that her greatness as a Justice is informed by her personal history and her diversity, not that it is defined by those characteristics. For that reason, the focus on “empathy” — rather than the “wisdom” or “good sense” of the nominee in light of her experience — plays out poorly, in my opinion.
Opponents’ first claim – likely stated obliquely and only on background – will be that Judge Sotomayor is not smart enough for the job. This is a critical ground for the White House to capture. The public expects Supreme Court Justices to be brilliant. Harriet Miers was painted (frequently, by conservatives) as not up to the job. The same claim (absurd to anyone who has talked with him) is still made by the left about Clarence Thomas. By contrast, John Roberts was described as brilliant and Sam Alito as exceptionally smart.
The objective evidence is that Sotomayor is in fact extremely intelligent. Graduating at the top of the class at Princeton is a signal accomplishment. Her opinions are thorough, well-reasoned, and clearly written. Nothing suggests she isn’t the match of the other Justices.
The second claim – and this one will be front and center – will be the classic resort to ideology: that Judge Sotomayor is a liberal ideologue and “judicial activist.” (Put to the side the emptiness of the labels – i.e., that one person’s principle (e.g., a decision invalidating state laws authorizing punitive damages) is another’s “activism.”) There is no question that Sonia Sotomayor would be on the left of this Supreme Court, just not the radical left. Our surveys of her opinions put her in essentially the same ideological position as Justice Souter. In the ideological cases where her rulings have been reviewed by the Supreme Court (for example, Malesko and the pending Ricci case), her views have aligned with the left of the current Court.
The third claim – related to the second – will be that Judge Sotomayor is unprincipled or dismissive of positions with which she disagrees. The three pieces of evidence initially cited for that proposition will be (i) the disposition of the Ricci case (in which a panel on which Sotomayor sat affirmed the dismissal of white firefighters’ claims in a very short and initially unpublished opinion), (ii) a panel appearance in which she acknowledged that appellate judges effectively make policy, and (iii) a speech in which she talked about the role of her gender and ethnicity in her decision making.
These reeds are too thin for that characterization to take hold. The public neither understands nor cares about the publication practices of the courts of appeals. It also is easily able to accept a judge’s recognition of the lawmaking effects of her decisions and the influences of her background. There just isn’t any remotely persuasive evidence that Judge Sotomayor acts lawlessly or anything of the sort.
Finally, critics will characterize her as gruff and impersonable, relying on excerpts from oral arguments and anonymous criticisms in the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary. Judge Sotomayor’s personal remarks will resolve this question for the public, to the extent it cares at all. But there isn’t any reason to believe that she is anything other than a tough questioner. My impression from her questioning at oral arguments is that it is similar to the Chief Justice, Justice Scalia, and (in cases in which he was particularly engaged) Justice Souter.
All in all, if Judge Sotomayor is nominated in a few hours, her easy confirmation seems assured.
When I first read the title I was drinking coffee and I almost did a spit-take. Because this Sotomayor was the first one that came to my mind.
Sotomayor is 54 and will be 55 when she is confirmed.
She is younger than Alito but a year older than Roberts. Good that Obama is thinking about age. There is finally a liberal on the court younger than Thomas.
National Review ^ on the nominee
More at the National Review Website
Quote:
| Originally Posted by stelios View Post When I first read the title I was drinking coffee and I almost did a spit-take. Because this Sotomayor was the first one that came to my mind. |
you so crazy man! so crazy!
GOP will attack Sotomayor and they will still lose. The only thing the GOP has right now is what the Obama Admin. and the weak Congressional Dems give them. They can’t affect anything unless the Dems give in… which is always possible, but not on this.
This is the first time I recall the usual Republican commentators decrying racism. Of course, they’ve no idea what the fuck they’re talking about - and this racism they suspect concerns white people, because those like Limbaugh and Beck are so inbred they believe there are “so few racists” out there; and I’ve yet to hear them acknowledge it exists from a white person - indicating that somebody like Sotomayor would be a useful justice, as it seems some of those white in power are entirely ignorant, which is what I wouldn’t be surprised she wishes she could have said. Hell, the most racism I experience is in the summer from my parents - “You look pale and sick! Why don’t you tan?” Though there was that one time somebody threatened me as a “fucking German” and I thought I’d be beat, but such an occasion is extremely bloody rare (and well, actually pretty damn amusing because I was with people at the time who aren’t white). Fuck the neo-cons.
Quote:
| Originally Posted by dreary louse View Post This is the first time I recall the usual Republican commentators decrying racism. Of course, they’ve no idea what the fuck they’re talking about - and this racism they suspect concerns white people, because those like Limbaugh and Beck are so inbred they believe there are “so few racists” out there; and I’ve yet to hear them acknowledge it exists from a white person - indicating that somebody like Sotomayor would be a useful justice, as it seems some of those white in power are entirely ignorant, which is what I wouldn’t be surprised she wishes she could have said. Hell, the most racism I experience is in the summer from my parents - “You look pale and sick! Why don’t you tan?” Though there was that one time somebody threatened me as a “fucking German” and I thought I’d be beat, but such an occasion is extremely bloody rare. Fuck the neo-cons. |
I’m one of those people who believes that reverse discrimination is a real thing. I just don’t think it should be thrown around in every situation because it’s a rare occurrence. The idea that Sotomayor is a racist is a pretty preposterous notion.
Well, to be honest, I doubt our society has progressed enough to declare anyone to not be racist - really, it’s levels of racism, ranging from “Eh, so he has a fetish for blondes” to “Whoa, holy shit, that’s really fucking racist.” Hell, my mp3 player is racist. It categorizes TV on the Radio as rap/hip hop. I’ve heard murmurs that Cuba has progressed much further in this regard, however.
Reverse-racism…something tells me this could lead into an affirmative action debate. But it exists, yes, o’course.
Quote:
| Originally Posted by dreary louse View Post I’ve heard murmurs that Cuba has progressed much further in this regard, however. |
You must have heard this from guilt ridden Canadian or European Cuban tourists, buying that sort of propaganda so they feel better.
http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedi...rt4/index.html
Cuba is likely more 65% or more black, the figure could still be higher. Obviously, in there hasn’t been a black president or many high level members of the communist party when they are the majority group in the country. I think that pretty much says it all.
Quote:
| But Castro’s own Communist Party and government fall short on the race front. Only four recognizably black faces sit on the party’s 21- member Political Bureau, and only two sit on the government’s top body, the 39- member Council of Minis- ters. The highest-ranking black in Cuba is Esteban Lazo, a former party chief in the provinces of Havana and Santiago de Cuba. Lazo was tapped by Castro when he took ill last summer, along with brother Raúl Castro and four others, to help rule Cuba in his absence. And yet, black faces populate Cuba’s political prisons. Some of the nation’s best known dissidents are black. They include independent librarian Omar Pernét Hernández, mason Orlando Zapata Tamayo and physician Oscar Elias Biscét. The latter was sentenced to 27 years for, among other things, organizing a seminar on Martin Luther King’s non–violent forms of protest. “Race is the biggest social issue facing Cuba,” said Enrique Patterson, a Cuban-born Miami author who writes extensively about race, and calls this nation’s race problem a “social bomb.” “If this problem isn’t addressed, Cuba will not be governable in the future.” |
Quote:
| Originally Posted by dreary louse View Post Though there was that one time somebody threatened me as a “fucking German” and I thought I’d be beat, but such an occasion is extremely bloody rare (and well, actually pretty damn amusing because I was with people at the time who aren’t white). |
Well, Jesus! When (and where!) the hell was that? Seriously.
In downtown Winnipeg last year. I imagined the white guy was a dumb, hardcore self-righteous Liberal, who in his head hates germans for being racists.
Thanks for the info, ElCapitan.
Quote:
| Originally Posted by ElCapitanAmerica View Post You must have heard this from guilt ridden Canadian or European Cuban tourists, buying that sort of propaganda so they feel better. |
And I suppose that members of Miami’s Cuban community are well known for their objectivity regarding Cuba’s regime. No agenda there.
Quote:
| Originally Posted by stelios View Post And I suppose that members of Miami’s Cuban community are well known for their objectivity regarding Cuba’s regime. No agenda there. |
What does that mean?
Do you know any high level government officials in Cuba who happen to be black? I’m sorry but I think before declaring racial harmony you would expect your government (even a repressive one) to have more representation of the majority ethnic group.
The brother Castro, Alarcon, Lage and Roque (now mysteriously fired by the Castros), all white. As the article indicates, the official party is not well represented.
BTW that article contains quotes from Mark Sawyer (UCLA) and even another one from Esteban Morales Dominguez (University of Havana) who lives in Cuba and is not even a dissident.
As for opinions from the exile community in Miami, you do know that they’re Cuban too right? People have this funny image that they are rich Batista refugees that escaped Cuba and are whining about their riches … a kind of laughable caricature that is believed by people who don’t know any better.
So regarding the Miami Herald article, yeah, I believed is sourced much better than anything published in Granma.
[http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.p…w…geId=99420](WorldNetDaily)
Quote:
| As President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee comes under heavy fire for allegedly being a “racist,” Judge Sonia Sotomayor is listed as a member of the National Council of La Raza, a group that’s promoted driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, amnesty programs, and no immigration law enforcement by local and state police. According the American Bar Association, Sotomayor is a member of the NCLR, which bills itself as the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S. Meaning “the Race,” La Raza also has connections to groups that advocate the separation of several southwestern states from the rest of America. Over the past two days, Sotomayor has been heavily criticized for her racially charged statement: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” The remark was actually made during a 2001 speech at the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law. The lecture was published the following year in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. Could Mexico retake the southwestern United States? Get the DVD that says the invasion is already happening! |
Hahahaha!
http://www.nclr.org/content/faqs/detail/39736/
Quote:
| What does the term “La Raza” mean? The term “La Raza” has its origins in early 20th century Latin American literature and translates into English most closely as “the people,” or, according to some scholars, “the Hispanic people of the New World.” The term was coined by Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos to reflect the fact that the people of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s races, cultures, and religions. Some people have mistranslated “La Raza” to mean “The Race,” implying that it is a term meant to exclude others. In fact, the full term coined by Vasconcelos, “La Raza Cósmica,” meaning the “cosmic people,” was developed to reflect not purity but the mixture inherent in the Hispanic people. This is an inclusive concept, meaning that Hispanics share with all other peoples of the world a common heritage and destiny. |
I also like the implication that there is some type of popular support among Hispanics for a “reconquista”, specially from a person whose both parents come from freaking Puerto Rico out of all places!
Quote:
| Originally Posted by Snaieke View Post [http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.p…w…geId=99420](WorldNetDaily) |
I trust any news source whose first link in their directory is to their store.
