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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