With messengers like Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, and a message that Judge Sotomayor is a racist, conservatives were talking just to themselves and sounding silly to everyone else. Statements like Curt Levey’s that there was a realistic prospect that Judge Sotomayor would have to withdraw her nomination just sounded stupid or willfully ignorant.All those white males, at once privileged and oppressed, reacting violently to a couple of benign expressions of ethnic* minority self-awareness. And Gingrich, of all people, a supposed historian.
Evidently his area of expertise is not the United States.
Also, from the New York Times:
Curt Levey, executive director of Committee for Justice, a conservative legal group active in judicial nominations, said that "while it's fine to let your Puerto Rican heritage influence — or any heritage for that matter — influence your positions when you're on a board, it's quite a different story when you're a judge, and I wonder whether she knows the difference."Why is that? Does Antonin Scalia likewise not know the difference between his enthusiasm for the death penalty and a Papal Bull?
* Not "race." "Latina" is not a "race."
On the face of things, she's not a bad pick. I've heard she can be unbearable in closed discussions, and if true, I'm glad I don't have to work with her ... but at the worst all her nomination will do is preserve the status quo. Of course I'm hoping that perhaps she'll be to Obama what Souter was for Bush.
ReplyDeleteThat's entirely possible. On criminal matters in particular she may be more inclined to side with the conservatives.
ReplyDelete