On Sotomayor, decisions loom for Bond and GOP senators
Sen. Bond
WASHINGTON — There’s a lot of talk about something called Ricci v. DeStefano in breaking down President Barack Obama’s nomination of Appellate Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
Soon, the conversation could shift to GOP v. Irked Conservatives.
Ricci v. DeStefano is the alleged reverse discrimination case we told you about yesterday that has become a rallying cry for Sotomayer detractors.
But the relationship between those detractors and the GOP senators who will be front-and-center in Sotomayer’s confirmation may soon turn into a bigger story that foretells the direction of a reloading Republican Party.
Notable since Obama’s pick was announced yesterday is the restraint by Bond and most Senate Republicans, as well as by Republican National Chairman Michael Steele. Their caution contrasts mightily with the rhetoric from idealogues like Rush Limbaugh, who stepped up his attacks on Sotomayer today by calling her “a racist and a bigot.”
In Missouri today, Bond repeated his tempered remarks of yesterday about wanting to take a look at her record. In 1998, Bond was one of a handful of senators who didn’t vote when Sotomayer was confirmed overwhelmingly for a federal judgeship with a bipartisan coalition of 67 votes.
That doesn’t mean he opposed Sotomayor; roll calls often have a few senators missing and Bond’s office said they’d try to find out why the senator didn’t vote that day. (Bond didn’t oppose her in ‘92 when a second court confirmation passed by unanimous consent.)
With Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court likely unless something unknown emerges, Republican senators have considerations beyond judicial philosophy. Among them are the rising Hispanic vote power in electoral swing states like New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. (Florida, too, although Latino issues cut differently there.)
We asked Washington University’s Steven S. Smith, director of the Weidenbaum Center and an expert on Congress, how he’s seeing things.
Smith said he believed that GOP senators are cautious “because they don’t want to get in personal trouble or get their colleagues in trouble over something that is likely to come and go quite quickly and is likely to harm their party in several ways - harming their party among Hispanics and harming their party among woman.”
Smith added that GOP senators surely are thinking about the challenge ahead with regard to the Hispanic vote “but the conservative firebrands are not. They are going to try to push Republicans as far as they can.”
How far do you think GOP senators will/should go on Sotomayor?
So Bill, are you prepared to say that this selection was more about ethnicity and gender than about qualifications?
Of course I wouldn’t say something like that. I’m not a columnist with the license to make such an assertion — even if I bought into it. I doubt if you’d find a half-dozen GOP senators who would give you a ‘yes’ on that question. That gulf between hardcore conservatives and GOPers was what this blog was about.
When a hardcore liberal President nominates a hardcore liberal jurist to the Supreme Court, why do you have to be a hardcore conservative to oppose the nomination? The Post-Dispatch editors, who would surely deny being called “left-wing extremists” used the Clarence Thomas nomination as an opportunity to savage both Thomas and President Bush.
As to the presumption that opposing this nominee spells trouble for Republicans with Latino and female voters - how silly. Did black voters abandon the Democratic party to punish them for opposing Thomas? Did Clarence Thomas become a rallying cry for men opposed to the Democratic party? Of course not. Most women I know don’t blindly support political candidates, or nominees, because they are female. Rather, they look at the qualifications and ideology of the candidate, and judge accordingly. I presume that most Latinos have also advanced beyond identity politics - and certainly, those who have not have much larger reasons than Sotomayor to reject the GOP.
If they stick to the facts, and illustrate how 60% of her appeals court rulings were overturned or struck down by higher courts, then that’s all they can do.
Obviously the deck is stacked in O’bama’s favor so, que sera sera.
It is striking though that the very court she wants to join disagreed with her a majority of the time. Would like to be a fly on the wall at those
court hearings.
unless something spectacular occurs…
Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed…
probably with more than 70 votes…
she will be our next Supreme Court Justice.
and I totally disagree with castoff on his Hispanic vote opinion…
if the gop is stupid enough to keep howling…
and repeating their foolish and fanatical charges…
that “she is a racist” (‘boss limbaugh’, newt and ,tom tancredo)…
and ‘she’s not smart enough’ (karl rove)…
to please their ‘base’ (old, white men)…
then progressives and the ‘uncommitted’ Hispanic and women voters…
will vote Democrat in droves.
most republicans are not the neo-con kooks…
that have blanketed the airwaves and media pages…
I know that facts are sometimes confusing when half-truths suffice so well for so many.
For reliable information on Judge Sotomayor go to http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/ or http://judgepedia.org/index.php/Sonia_Sotomayor
“… she wrote 380 majority opinions during her 11 years on the appeals court. Of those 380 opinions, the Supreme Court heard five of the cases and overturned her on three.” http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/27/60-reversal-of-sotomayor-rulings-gives-fodder-to-f/
Of course what the Washington Times neglected to do was provide the context of their story, after all it would not have made such an exciting headline “Sotomayor reversed at a lower percentage than Justice Alito”.
cf. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/27/sotomayors-reversals-no-d_n_208362.html
What is of greater concern than the reversal rates being bandied about, is her judicial philosophy as exhibited in her rulings and opinions. Is she going to be another extremist as Scalia with his “originalist” view? Or will she focus on the facts as presented?
Forunately for the nation, the wing-nuts, left and right, do not sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Obama set a political trap for the GOP….The wingnuttery has taken the bait..we will see if the “elected” officials also take the bait. BRILLIANT move by Obama.
Nick Kasoff,
The difference between Thomas and Sotomayor is that Thomas rallied against the causes of Blacks where Sotomayor has a history of rallying for the causes of Hispanics. Blacks have never had a love affair with Thomas for good cause where Hispanics for good cause have a love affair with Sotomayor.
You have better believe that Hispanics will turn further away from the Republican Party than they already have if these Republicans do not stand up to that loud mouth Rush Limbaugh and all the other conservative behaving as the deranged out there name calling Sotomayor without just cause for no other reason than Obama being the one appointing her. This ilk of Conservatives need to grow up and the GOP Republicans need to go see the Wizard of Oz for some courage,(lol).