A recent editorial cartoon in The Denver Post featured the symbolic GOP elephant, wearing a workman’s overalls and cap, crouched in frustration in the corner of a room after painting the floor and stranding himself there with no way out. The painted floor was cleverly labeled “Sotomayor opposition” and the door to the room, well out of his reach, was marked “the Hispanic vote.”
If you missed the not-so-subtle message, the cartoon was echoing the conventional liberal wisdom that Republicans who oppose Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court will drive Latino voters away from their party in the next election.
In a column in the Chicago Sun-Times, Jesse Jackson raises the ante, branding Sotomayor’s critics as racists. This, ironically, from the man who’s made a career out of racial extortion. In that same column, Jackson describes Sotomayor as a moderate in the mold of retiring Justice David Souter. I agree with Jackson’s comparison, if not his labeling. Sotomayor does come from the same mold as Souter. And if Souter is a moderate, there are no liberals on the Supreme Court.
One of the main objections to Sotomayor is her infusion of identity politics with her approach to judging. She’s declared that as a Latina judge, she would render “better” decisions, as she put it, “than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” suggesting favoritism for some based on “empathy,” a judicial quality dear to President Obama. This would be a radical departure from the traditional portrayal of Lady Justice, blindfolded so that justice could be impartially rendered without regard for an individual’s identity, power or weakness.
Sotomayor was also on the liberal, racial preference side of the Ricci case in New Haven, Conn., where white firefighters were the victims of reverse discrimination and denied promotion when their high scores on proficiency exams were thrown out because blacks did poorly. That case is currently being reviewed by the Supremes, with a high likelihood that Sotomayor’s interpretation of the law will be overturned.
But Sotomayor is no liberal, insist her liberal defenders; if she were, why would President George H.W. Bush have nominated her for a federal district court seat in 1991? Easy. Because it was part of a deal with New York Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was holding up several conservative Bush nominees. He’d let their confirmations proceed in exchange for Bush’s nomination of Sotomayor, Moynihan’s pick.
Clearly, if Sotomayor were not considered a liberal, she’d have never been nominated by Obama in the first place. Democrats don’t make mistakes in this area, as Republican presidents have with Earl Warren (Eisenhower), John Paul Stevens (Ford) and David Souter (George H.W. Bush).
Charges of Republican racism, in this instance, are conveniently and transparently contrived.
Did Jesse Jackson brand as racists the white Democrats who raked Clarence Thomas over the coals during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings? Of course not; as a conservative, Thomas wasn’t protected by his color.
And where was the outrage from Hispanic activists when Senate Democrats blocked, for more than two years, President Bush’s 2001 nomination of another Latino, Miguel Estrada, to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals? That opposition was led by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, fearing that the Bush White House was grooming Estrada for the Supreme Court, to which the D.C. District Court has been a traditional stepping stone. Apparently, it’s only racism when you oppose a liberal Latino or Latina.
Republicans shouldn’t be cowed by political expediency or phony charges of racism. Advice from the Senate on judicial nominees doesn’t necessarily include consent. Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing is an appropriate forum for a public discussion of key issues like judicial activism, racial preferences and the influence of foreign courts. The debate should be instructive.
Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.
