Sotomayor and Republican Choices

 

 

President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court shows the president at his most gracious towards the Republicans who bedevil him, giving them a choice and a voice in one of a President’s most enduring decisions.

 

Sure, the choice is like that 20 states give condemned inmates facing execution, allowing them a say in method, not outcome. Hey, it’s a choice, right?

 

And if the voice Senate Republicans get is the kind heard after a warden says “Any last words?”  they still can’t claim being denied a voice.

 

Senate Republicans trying to resist a growing urge to lie down in front of any steamroller they see have limited options in opposing Sotomayor, all of them bad.

 

Republicans can oppose Sotomayor because she’s female. Of course, they wouldn’t say so explicitly, but the party’s Cheney/Limbaugh base, which can only see women in either nighties or cooking aprons, would understand and approve.

 

Women voters, of course, might see it differently. In the 2008 presidential election, Republicans lost unmarried women by a 70-29 margin. And they lost women overall 56-43. Opposing the nominee because she’s female would certainly build on that record.

 

Republican can oppose Sotomayor because she’s Hispanic. In a 2001 lecture, she is reported to have said “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

 

“Racist!” yells the Republican core, which admittedly ought to know, but is wrong on this one. If the idea, as it says on the Supreme Court building, is “Equal Justice Under Law,” than those dispensing justice must at least in some way connect with those judged – and with the likely real-world consequences of their decisions.  That won’t wash with the Republican core, which is made nervous by census data showing Hispanics account for more than 15 percent of the U.S. population, and downright jittery when they look at the 2008 results with Democrats taking Hispanics 67-31. If Republicans seek even more distance from the Hispanic electorate, opposing Sotomayor is the ticket.

 

Republicans can oppose Sotomayor because she’s liberal. Of all the grounds for opposition, this is the least odious. It chucks a scrap to the snarling core that that bays attack when it sniffs the L-word, and at least  spritzes GOP Senators with Eau De Principle. But the record of Supreme Court justices voting the way folks who nominated and confirmed them thought they would isn’t good. Soon to-be-retired Justice David Souter, who was supposed to be a safe and solid conservative appointee of President Bush I, ended his career as a mostly liberal vote on the court. This course won’t cause more self-inflicted Republican damage, but it won’t gain any converts, either.

 

Prediction: Republicans will oppose Sotomayor because she’s a female Hispanic liberal. With a sure instinct to find the worst of all possible outcomes in any recent political situation, the Republican party will manage to offend all possible new constituents while catering to a core that sees Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney as the rising young hopes of tomorrow.

 

If the post-Sotomayor confirmation Republicans are offered a last meal, they shouldn’t be surprised if it’s crow.

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Republican Soul,

Convergent Series

 

Republicans are fighting for their party’s soul, which may be welcome news to those who wondered if it had one, but distressing to whole generations of political journalists who are accustomed to easy work reporting on the squabbles between Democrats and Republicans:

 

 WASHINGTON – Democrats in the House said the moon was made of green cheese today, but Republicans declared it evidence of undue influence by the cracker lobby.  All that kind of political journalism took was pairing an absurdity from the Democrats with another from the Republicans -- and both parties were eager to keep you supplied.

 

Now, political journalists are confronted with a Republican party that seems determined to argue itself out of existence, hell-bent on excluding those whose ideology isn’t pure. The current purity standard is agreeing with the Test Committee’s views.

 

The Test Committee, of course, consists of Rush Limbaugh, a radio commentator whose volume is inversely proportional to his intellect, and Dick Cheney, whose pioneering work on the Adjustable Moral Compass speaks for itself.

 

Now the Test Committee is trying to hustle Colin Powell out of the party, saying his endorsement of Barack Obama over John McCain was the final straw. Informed sources say previous straws included Powell’s belief that the Earth is round and revolves around the Sun.

 

All of which, the Test Committee says, amounts to ample reason for excluding a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State from discussion of serious Republican matters. Even if he says he’s a Republican and all that service was under Republican presidents.

 

So the debate pretty much comes down to whether the Republican party is more comfortable in Ronald Reagan’s Big Tent, where it lived in the 80s, or in the much more exclusive Cheney-Limbaugh Club, the one with the prominent  Members Only sign.

 

The Cheney-Limbaugh founders have made it pretty plain that they don’t want Powell around, and Powell has made it pretty plain that they can stick that in their ear. (Ever rational, Powell chose ears as the receptacle after clear evidence that neither Cheney nor Limbaugh could find the other obvious place with both hands.)

 

Backers of the Cheney-Limbaugh Club say their faction will win the dispute and that the Republican party will become smaller but purer and go on forever. And in that, they may be more right than they know.

 

In 1979, science fiction writer Larry Niven published a story in which a demon intent on collecting a soul may only reappear within the confines of a pentagram -- which the protagonist cleverly draws on the demon’s belly. Every time the demon tries to appear, it’s too big for the pentagram, and so shrinks itself and tries again -- and again, and again, since each time it shrinks itself smaller, it makes its target smaller still.

 

Niven called the story Convergent Series, and there’s squiggly-line math about the concept, but the important thing to remember for Republicans is that it’s a story about eternal shrinking.

 

However big the pentagrams on the Cheney-Limbaugh bellies look now, Republicans should think twice about appearing there.

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Core Republican Peasants

 

Sociologists who worried that the United States would never establish a permanent peasant class should look in gratitude to Core Republicans – they’re volunteering.

 

Most folk think being a peasant means wearing a special costume and following ancient life customs. Just look at a gathering of Core Republicans.

 

Suit and tie or jeans and workshirt are the two main male costume groups, and it doesn’t matter which group you’re in as much as it matters that everyone in your group dresses exactly like you do. No exceptions allowed.

 

Core Republican women have a broader (wink! nudge! get it?) choice of costume  but within that spectrum the rule is as ironclad as among the men. No exceptions allowed.

 

Core Republicans balance that wild diversity of dress with an even stricter set of life customs. In common with peasants throughout history, the focus of  customs is to guard against Change.

 

“My father did it this way and his father and his father before him, and I will do the same,” is a mantra that can be applied equally to sowing the fields with manure and reaping the crop at the polls. Just look at the Core Republican harvest in 2006 and 2008. Look for them to do it again in 2010 and 2012, since consistency is to be cherished, whether or not it works.

 

For Core Republicans, the past is never prologue – the past is always present, and it’s that suspicious-looking Future you’ve got to guard against, lest Change get the upper hand.

 

Under stress from the constant attacks of Change, Core Republicans like to chant their traditional mantra:

 

Marriage is between a man and a woman, and it always will be.

 

The invisible hand of the market is what protects us, and it always will be.

 

A traditional family is the only way to raise children, and it always will be.

 

Equal opportunity is just reverse discrimination, and it always will be.

 

Unregulated capitalism is the best economic model, and it always will be.

 

The stimulus package is wrong, and it always will be.

 

Universal, government-backed health care is wrong, and it always will be.

 

Multi-nation diplomacy instead of unilateral aggression is wrong, and it always will be.

 

The mantra goes on forever, but each verse always ends the same way.  For Core Republicans, that’s the core value: Always The Same.

 

That the rest of us in large numbers ignore the mantra only validates it. Just ask the most prominent Core Republicans, including Rush Limbaugh, whose website offers this pearl:” "When you interact with average, ordinary, everyday liberals or Democrats, it's hard not to think, 'My God, the country is finished.'"

 

Apparently taking that to heart, Core Republicans avoid interacting with ordinary, everyday liberals or Democrats, especially when it comes to building workable majorities in Congress. Of course, when you interact, you sometimes have to compromise.

 

And we know what Core Republicans think about compromise, so let’s say it together: “Compromise is bad, and it always will be.

 

So Core Republicans are clearly enthusiastic about becoming the permanent American peasant class.

 

Now if we could only teach them quaint folk dances. . .

 

 

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