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Filed in National by on May 30, 2009

Republicans, fight among yourselves.

First, we have Newt Gingrich tweeting from Auschwitz that Sotomayor is a racist. And former Congressman Tom Tancredo doubles down by calling La Raza equivalent to the KKK.

Senator John Cornyn is obviously worried about the perception that the war on Sotomayor will take down the entire Republican party, saying this:

“I think it’s terrible. This is not the kind of tone that any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advice and consent,” Cornyn told NPR’s “All Things Considered” of the attack on Sotomayor as “racist.”

“Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials,” he said of Gingrich and Limbaugh. “I just don’t think it’s appropriate and I certainly don’t endorse it. I think it’s wrong.”

Newt Gingrich wants to prove that Cornyn is not the boss of him, doubling down:

“Can you imagine if the President of the United States nominated a judge to the U.S. Supreme Court who said this: ‘My experience as a white man will make me a better judge than a Latina woman would be,'” he asks in the email. “Or could you imagine if that same judge ruled from the bench to deny 18 African-American firefighters a promotion just because of their skin color?”

“That judge would be called a bigot — and in my judgment, rightly so! Would there be any doubt that he would be FORCED to WITHDRAW his nomination for the Supreme Court?”

She’s not only a racist, but she should be forced to withdraw! Oh my! He even quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. in his email.

Peggy Noonan begs for Republicans to exercise some restraint:

And that’s what the GOP should do right now: play grown-up.

…

But back to Sonia Sotomayor, which is my subject.

She is of course a brilliant political pick—Hispanic when Republicans have trouble with Hispanics, a woman when they’ve had trouble with women. Her background (public housing, Nuyorican, Catholic school, Princeton, prominence) is as moving as Clarence Thomas’s, and that is moving indeed. Politically she’s like a beautiful doll containing a canister of poison gas: Break her and you die.

…

Some, and they are idiots, look at Judge Sotomayor and say: attack, attack, kill. A conservative activist told the New York Times, “We need to brand her.” Another told me a fight is needed to excite the base.

Excite the base? How about excite a moderate, or interest an independent? How about gain the attention of people who aren’t already on your side?

Good points, Peggy. Some Republicans ARE idiots. And yes, I think their base is excited enough already. Will the Republicans listen?

Oh my…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1r3LIZRwck&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

There you have it, folks. White men are the new repressed minority.

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Opinionated chemist, troublemaker, blogger on national and Delaware politics.

Comments (18)

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  1. pandora says:
    May 30, 2009 at 10:46 am

    Soooo embarrassing. The problem facing the Republican Party is that there are no shades of gray. All non-Republicans are evil – not just a person they disagree with, but evil!

    They react to everything in the extreme, and then wonder why people don’t take them seriously. It’s impossible to keep up with what outrages them. All everyone knows is that they’re outraged – constantly, about everything.

    They are ridiculous, and have no one to blame but themselves for this accurate description.

  2. cassandra_m says:
    May 30, 2009 at 10:50 am

    White men are the new repressed minority.

    New? LOL!

    Let’s add in this bit of Hypocrisy Watch from TPM:

    But as Media Matters points out, back in 2003 the right was more than willing to accuse Democrats of being racist against Hispanics for opposing George W. Bush’s nomination of Miguel Estrada for the Court of Appeals.

    Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who is now the Senate GOP whip, said of the Dems blocking the nomination: “I see this, really, as a slap at Hispanics.” And Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) declared that “some of the opponents of him are racist.” Other Republicans who are no longer in Congress, including Sens. Rick Santorum and Trent Lott and Rep. Henry Bonilla, made similar remarks.

    And the Committee For Justice — one of the groups now mobilizing against Sotomayor — ran an ad: “Call the Senate Democrats. Tell them it’s time for intolerance to end. Anything less is offensive, unfair, and not the American way.”

  3. Unstable Isotope says:
    May 30, 2009 at 10:53 am

    I really do see this as the flipside of what Republicans are good at. No one is better than Republicans at ginning up outrage and getting the media to cover it. Now they’re doing it, but they are embarrassing that powers that be. Oh well.

    I have been a bit upset listening to what people are saying, including the incredible misogyny and racism of some of the critics. These Republicans are certainly winning the battle to lose the war. They are unloading all of the ammunition now – do they think people are going to buy the hyperventilations if Obama nominated a real liberal to the bench?

  4. nemski says:
    May 30, 2009 at 10:58 am

    I like Grandmaster Steele’s slammin’ and rammin’ comment. This guy can’t even say the right thing without looking like a blogger strung out on nodoze.

    The trap here for the GOP I think is enormous. And I know that a lot of folks want to do the knee jerk you know let’s start slammin’ and rammin’, but I think we really need to take a step back from this and deal with two things, one, the historic aspect of it, acknowledge it, but then move on to the substance of the conversation about what this woman believes.

  5. Unstable Isotope says:
    May 30, 2009 at 11:02 am

    Can Steele say something smart without sounding stupid? Yes, opposition to her should come from substance. BTW, I read that Red State is now calling Cornyn a “RINO.” Cornyn, who once expressed fear of man-box turtle marriage, is now a RINO.

  6. Brian Shields says:
    May 30, 2009 at 11:02 am

    Then you have Frank Knotts hoping the GOP becomes the next new third party.

    http://politicallyfrank.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/third-party/

  7. Unstable Isotope says:
    May 30, 2009 at 11:03 am

    Who’s the second party?

  8. nemski says:
    May 30, 2009 at 11:06 am

    Thanks Brian. I need to read Frank more often.

    Here’s a quote:

    . . . the strong voice of opposition that it [the GOP] needs to be at this turning point in America when the socialist are poised to change the very fabric of our nation.

  9. cassandra_m says:
    May 30, 2009 at 11:08 am

    The graphic for nemski’s comment re: Steele.

  10. Unstable Isotope says:
    May 30, 2009 at 11:12 am

    The LA Times wrote an article about this subject. They quote one additional Republican, Orrin Hatch:

    Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) rejected their assertion that Sotomayor is racist. “I don’t agree with that,” he said on CNN. “And, frankly, I think it’s a little premature and early, because she hasn’t had a chance to explain some of these comments that she’s made.”

  11. nemski says:
    May 30, 2009 at 11:16 am

    Well, you know that Utah Republicans can’t really be trusted.

  12. Unstable Isotope says:
    May 30, 2009 at 11:25 am

    I wonder how happy that Jon Huntsman, Tom Ridge and Colin Powell are right now that they aren’t stuck in party politics with these clowns. Palin, Romney, Sanford and other Republican presidential hopefuls all have to balance the line between these two (at least) factions.

    Wow, here’s some actual facts about Sotomayor’s rulings on racial discrimination.

    “Other than Ricci, Judge Sotomayor has decided 96 race-related cases while on the court of appeals.

    Of the 96 cases, Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and agreed with the claim of discrimination 10 times; the remaining 8 involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 cases favoring claims of discrimination, 9 were unanimous. (Many, by the way, were procedural victories rather than judgments that discrimination had occurred.) Of those 9, in 7, the unanimous panel included at least one Republican-appointed judge. In the one divided panel opinion, the dissent’s point dealt only with the technical question of whether the criminal defendant in that case had forfeited his challenge to the jury selection in his case. So Judge Sotomayor rejected discrimination-related claims by a margin of roughly 8 to 1.

    Of the roughly 75 panel opinions rejecting claims of discrimination, Judge Sotomayor dissented 2 times. In Neilson v. Colgate-Palmolive Co., 199 F.3d 642 (1999), she dissented from the affirmance of the district court’s order appointing a guardian for the plaintiff, an issue unrelated to race. In Gant v. Wallingford Bd. of Educ., 195 F.3d 134 (1999), she would have allowed a black kindergartner to proceed with the claim that he was discriminated against in a school transfer. A third dissent did not relate to race discrimination: In Pappas v. Giuliani, 290 F.3d 143 (2002), she dissented from the majority’s holding that the NYPD could fire a white employee for distributing racist materials.

    As noted in the post below, Judge Sotomayor was twice on panels reversing district court decisions agreeing with race-related claims – i.e., reversing a finding of impermissible race-based decisions. Both were criminal cases involving jury selection. (…)

    In sum, in an eleven-year career on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has participated in roughly 100 panel decisions involving questions of race and has disagreed with her colleagues in those cases (a fair measure of whether she is an outlier) a total of 4 times. Only one case (Gant) in that entire eleven years actually involved the question whether race discrimination may have occurred. (In another case (Pappas) she dissented to favor a white bigot.) She particulated in two other panels rejecting district court rulings agreeing with race-based jury-selection claims. Given that record, it seems absurd to say that Judge Sotomayor allows race to infect her decisionmaking.”

    The analysis from SCOTUSblog, link from The Washington Monthly.

  13. nemski says:
    May 30, 2009 at 11:32 am

    But what about Dealergate?

  14. Brian Shields says:
    May 30, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    Who’s the second party?

    If I have my way, the Libertarian Party will be.

  15. jason330 says:
    May 30, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    I wise commenter once wrote that the Republican approach to governing is, ““Attack. Attack. Attack. Attack. Attack. Attack. Feign good will. Attack. Attack. Attack. Line pockets with the spoils”

    It is their approach to being in the minority as well.

    So the point of all this is to try and lock up the Mike Protack, FSP, David A, Art Downs vote. I wish them well as they pursue that strategy.

  16. Republican David says:
    May 30, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    You guys are enjoying this too much. Unfortunately, while you laugh, Democrats are looking at a VAT which would devastate domestic industry.

  17. jason330 says:
    May 30, 2009 at 6:32 pm

    All Taxes = Teh Evil

    We get it. How’d the last election work out for you guys? Okay then.

  18. rhubard says:
    May 31, 2009 at 8:33 am

    I like the “changing the fabric of America” line. To what? Hemp?

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