How to Handle Sotomayor
Posted on July 13th, 2009
by Patrick J. Buchanan |
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Republicans have been given fair warning.
Should GOP senators treat Sonia Sotomayor as contemptuously as Democrats treated Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, they should expect Hispanic hostility for a generation.
The chutzpah of this Beltway crowd does not cease to amaze.
They archly demand that conservatives accord a self-described “affirmative action baby” from Princeton a respect they never for a moment accorded a pro-life conservative mother of five from Idaho State, Sarah Palin.
Pundits here get hoots of appreciation for doing to a white Christian woman what would constitute a hate crime if done to a “wise Latina woman.” But, as no Republican who followed the script of the mainstream media ever won a national election, why should the party pay them mind?
The imperative of the GOP is not to appease a city that went 93-7 for Obama, but to win back its lost voters.
In 2008, Hispanics, according to the latest figures, were 7.4 percent of the total vote. White folks were 74 percent, 10 times as large. Adding just 1 percent to the white vote is thus the same as adding 10 percent to the candidate’s Hispanic vote.
If John McCain, instead of getting 55 percent of the white vote, got the 58 percent George W. Bush got in 2004, that would have had the same impact as lifting his share of the Hispanic vote from 32 percent to 62 percent.
But even Ronald Reagan never got over 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. Yet, he and Richard Nixon both got around 65 percent of the white vote.
When Republican identification is down to 20 percent, but 40 percent of Americans identify themselves as conservatives, do Republicans need a GPS to tell them which way to go?
Why did McCain fail to win the white conservative Democrats Hillary Clinton swept in the primaries? He never addressed or cared about their issues.
These are the folks whose jobs have been outsourced to China and Asia, who pay the price of affirmative action when their sons and daughters are pushed aside to make room for the Sonia Sotomayors. These are the folks who want the borders secured and the illegals sent back.
Had McCain been willing to drape Jeremiah Wright around the neck of Barack Obama, as Lee Atwater draped Willie Horton around the neck of Michael Dukakis, the mainstream media might have howled.
And McCain might be president.
McCain soared a dozen points when he picked Palin, who seemed to Reagan Democrats to be “one of us.” They came roaring back, but left for good when McCain declared the economy fundamentally sound and rushed to D.C. to persuade Republicans to vote for a huge bank bailout opposed by Americans 100 to 1.
How, then, to handle Sotomayor?
As Republicans have never brutalized a Supreme Court nominee — Ruth Bader Ginsburg got 96 votes and Stephen Breyer 87 — they need no lectures on decency or decorum.
What they must do is expose Sotomayor, as they did not in the case of Ginsburg, as a political activist whose career bespeaks a lifelong resolve to discriminate against white males to the degree necessary to bring about an equality of rewards in society.
Sonia is, first and foremost, a Latina. She has not hesitated to demand, even in college and law school, ethnic and gender preferences for her own. Her concept of justice is race-based.
Testifying to Democrats’ awareness that America does not want liberal justices for whom affirmative action is holy writ, Sotomayor is being promoted as a practitioner of judicial restraint who faithfully follows the Constitution and the law.
Yet here is a judge who ruled that New York state, by denying felons the vote, violated their civil rights.
How so? As there are disproportionately more blacks and Hispanics in prison, denying convicts the right to vote has a disparate impact on minorities.
The New York law does discriminate, but not on the basis of race, but whether or not you raped, robbed or murdered someone.
Even if Sotomayor is confirmed, making the nation aware she is a militant supporter since college days of ethnic and gender preferences is an assignment worth pursuing. For America does not believe in preferences. Even in the blue states of California, Washington and Michigan, voters have tossed them out as naked discrimination against white males.
As Sotomayor would be a colorful personality in a bland liberal lineup of Ginsburg, Breyer and John Paul Stevens, she would stand out, like the co-ed-chasing “Wild Bill” Douglas in the 1960s and 1970s.
And if Republicans, in 2010 and 2012, can point to the court and say Sotomayor is their kind of justice, and Scalia, Roberts, Alito and Thomas are our kind of justices, that will not be all bad.
Justice Douglas, Ramsey Clark, and Jocelyn Elders, after all, did a whale of a lot of good for the Republican Party in days gone by.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Filed under: Politics
In response to Pat’s post on June 1st, I submitted this comment:
The questioning of Sonia Sotomayor should be a simple matter.
#1 - Is she likely to be confirmed? Do the Democrats have enough votes to override any Republican objection?
#2 - If #1 is “yes”, then what is the goal of the Republicans? If she is to be confirmed, can WE THE PUBLIC use this as an opportunity to identify REPUBLICAN obstructionists and grandstanders, that would hurt our cause? (We may later need to BEGIN TO WEED THESE OUT of Congress/house/senate).
#3 - If she will PROBABLY BE CONFIRMED, then it is legitimate to note our objections and questions, without ALIENATING a lifetime Supreme Court Appointee, and also the Latino community.
Here are SOME of our questions:
Did SOTOMAYOR intend to say that the Latina point of view is superior to some “white” point of view? Has she changed her mind, since making those statements?
Or, did she intend to point out that EVERYONE has experiences that would help them make BETTER decisions than perhaps someone else would be able to make, without those experiences?
If it would be legitimate to ask a GAMBLING ADDICT whether or not they would make decisions by a ROLL OF THE DICE, so too it would be acceptable for us to ask:
#1 - Can the Supreme Court be used to insure equity for a minority, based on the percentage of the US population they represent?
#2 - Can the Supreme Court be used to established a “favored minority” status, for anyone the judge is sympathetic to?
#3 - Can the Supreme Court be used to “compensate” for past wrongs or inequities, by rewarding a minority to a degree LARGER than the scope of the current specific case being considered?
As with so many other things the question this raises for me is whether there is really any hope for non-tribal U.S. politics in the future, and everything I see now at least says no.
Just the Sotomayor situation alone kind of tells the story to me: How in the world did we get to the situation where a Supreme Court nominee could utter her “wise Latina” remark and be confirmed when a white male uttering his version of same would without question be utterly and absolutely disqualified by same?
To me the only answer is that the now decades-old attempt to fight modern non-tribal politics has just absolutely and utterly failed. Barring something I at least don’t see sooner or later the only outlet for the interests of the non-tribal will be to become tribal, and as Buchanan’s math notes it has its potential.
The only possibility I guess is that the current strength of tribal politics will wane, but my problem is that I don’t see why that will happen. People have a seemingly natural need to distinguish themselves; can anyone see any other basis for doing so with even half so much of the apparent strength of racial/ethnic/tribal identity?
As that fairly recent piece in Foreign Affairs noted, while we in the West delude ourselves about the arrow of history otherwise, in the rest of the world tribalism of one form or another is only gaining importance.
It’s funny, but the inability to arouse the mass of good and ostensibly non-tribalist folks about something like Sotomayor’s comment really is just a kind of vindication of tribalism. In essence, they seem to be saying it’s perfectly understandable and okay for people to think that way. Valid and legitimate.
Not my cup of tea for sure and I’m glad I’ll probably be dead by the time it comes, but the future I think is gonna be an all-tribal, all-the-time affair, with the Caucasian equivalent of the other tribes sooner or later coming to the fore.
It sounds unrecognizable in terms of the U.S., but then again the perspective of the tribalists who have brought us to this pass has been that in fact America’s total tribalism has always existed, it’s just been deceitfully hidden by the majority tribe. Not that same will stop them from screaming bloody murder when that majority tribe emerges and finds its tribal voice, but it won’t be lacking in irony at least.
“Should GOP senators treat Sonia Sotomayor as contemptuously as Democrats treated Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, they should expect Hispanic hostility for a generation.”
Bork was a criminal; he was promoted by Nixon for obstructing justice. And then made a judge by Reagan as a further reward. In a better system, he’d now be eligible for parole. And that’s not taking into account that he’s a batsh*t insane right-winger, on the order of a Patrick Buchanan.
Clarence Thomas was a cynical and very successful attempt to play on race - by the GOP.
Alito?!?! You mean Mr. ‘Swiftly Confirmed’ Alito?
I gotta ask, just WTF are you complaining about Pat? Whackjobs on the right are swiftly confirmed, with a few token complaints. Meanwhile, we see Senator Hatch pocket veto 6-0 Clinton nominees, with nary a problem.
http://www.SupremeCourtWatchOnline.com is a great conservative source for the latest confirmation news. You can read the most current news and express your opinion by leaving comments.
Dear Mr. Buchanan,
Did you have a chance to see the electrifying speech President Obama gave to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the NAACP? He spoke very clearly of change coming from the family unit ‘up’, although of course he said that government also had a part to play.
In terms of Judge Sotomayor, it is my belief that the woman who testified before that committee last week should be confirmed as soon as possible–a fine Judge of the liberal persuasion. The Court, I’m sure you’d agree, needs balance. The thing that keeps troubling me is this: IS Sonia Sotomayor that woman who testified last week, or is that woman who testified last week the product of several weeks of coaching and media-spin?
It is ironic that a President who spoke so beautifully, so eloquently, about transcending race, who in fact embodies such transcendence, should nominate someone to the Supreme Court whose career seems to cry out AGAINST transcending race.
I hope that, if Justice Sotomayor is confirmed, she does indeed stand out, as you suggest, perhaps becoming a ‘wise Latina’ counterpart to Justice Scalia.