When Will Republicans Claim Sotomayor is Lesbian?
It is only a matter of time. The GOP is going to spend their credibility on this one, throwing every accusation from racism to the notion that Sotomayor is an affirmative action appointment. The only question is when will they accuse her of being a lesbian? Perhaps we should start a pool predicting when this eventuality happens.
Let’s see. So far Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich have claimed Sonia Sotomayor is a racist. Yes, the pulled out the race card they are so fond of claiming liberals use. I suppose it is important to note that one Republican, John Cornyn, has labelled such an attack as “terrible.” From NPR:
Sen. John Cornyn tonight repudiated the allegation that Judge Sonia Sotomayor is “racist” - and he distanced himself in no uncertain terms from the conservative opinion leaders who leveled that charge against the Supreme Court nominee, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
“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.”
. . .
Asked by NPR if he’s worried that comments like Limbaugh and Gingrich’s harm the confirmation debate, Cornyn said: “Neither one of these men are elected Republican officials. I just don’t think it’s appropriate and I certainly don’t endorse it. I think it’s wrong.”
We should expect John Cornyn to apologize to Rush Limbaugh in the next couple of days, but he represents reality. Right Wing commentator Mark Halperin is right that the Republicans will not succeed in stopping Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court from being confirmed. No, charges of racism won’t work, and neither will the insinuations that Sotomayor, a graduate of Princeton and Yale Law with high honors at both fine institutions, is an intellectual lightweight. They’ve also claimed she is an activist liberal judge, legislating from the bench, but as Eugene Robinson notes, that’s also a false charge. Heck, the whack job Christian conservatives screamed that Sotomayor was a pro-abortion activist without mentioning the two decisions by Sotomayor supporting the anti-abortion side of the issue. That isn’t going to work either.
There’s already a lot of fringe folks talking about how Sotomayor is ugly, or a closet leftist, or both, as referenced briefly on Powerline. But this is all really about Republicans energizing the base with the hopes of energizing their fundraising in the near future. That might seem a good goal for them, if it isn’t also a tactic that will alienate women and Hispanic voting blocs. Yeah, that’s the trap Obama has set nominating a Latina with stellar qualifications, and the Republicans seem to be walking right into the trap. And they’ll attack on several more fronts. As previewed by the New York Times this morning, the GOP will likely go after Sotomayor based on her temperament, which is, of course, a sexist attack, and on her associations with advocacy groups, which will likely anger the Hispanic electorate even more.
My question is why hasn’t a Republican accused Sotomayor of being a lesbian yet? Certainly they know the gay issue energized the base in California by both getting out the vote and garnering fundraising dollars during the Prop 8 fight last fall. Sotomayor is divorced and lives in the village. Seems a no-brainer, no matter that there isn’t a scintilla of fact behind such an accusation. With a challenge to national marriage laws coming from the odd couple of Theodore Olson and David Boies, the issue will be in the news for the foreseeable future. If they could claim Sotomayor is a lesbian, then they’ve got a winner of a fundraising issue, and what does the GOP care about offending gay and lesbian citizens, or Obama, or liberals?
How will they make such a claim? I’m betting the first claim will come from a media whack job like Savage or O’Reilly, then will be talked about in the mainstream news for several days. After all, when a GOP whack job speaks, it becomes news. See, Cheney, Dick. The claim will come about five days before the Senate Judicial Committee hearings to confirm Sonia Sotomayor are scheduled. The whack job extremist world that is the Republican base will scream and fret and send in their dollars to the GOP, and the Republican Senators will get to grandstand on the issue of marriage, encouraged, perhaps, by that latest Gallup poll, ignoring other polls, of course. What they won’t have figured out is that in addition to alienating women and Hispanic voting blocs, they will then alienate the young even further. But I’m not giving the GOP credit for smarts.
The thing that makes the statement racist in my view is the implication that someone being born a Latina will have a richness of experience that a white male can’t possibly have and that it will make their opinions “better” (key word) than that of a white male more often than not. Seems to suggest that being born a white male will put you at a disadvantage when compared to Latinas since your opinions will more often than not be worse… And why are they worse? Since you weren’t born a Latina, you didn’t get richness of experience and therefore your opinions are more often than not worse than those of the Latina. I don’t know what you call thinking/hoping your race gives you an inherent superiority over other races that they can’t overcome, but I call it racist. At least that’s how I interpret it.
Ultimately, this seems like a single instance of bad wording on her part and I don’t really see anything else that would imply her being an actual racist. More could come out, but I’m not going on a hunt over it. As it is now, I think she deserves the benefit of the doubt. Though it would be nice to have a simple clarification at some point just to hear her say it directly.
It is not bad wording when the judging being done is about the life experience of a Latina brought up in dire circumstances. Check out context next time.
Good article, the advertisment is sold?
The comments by G Gordon Liddy are of note — I would be interested in what leading figures in the GOP have said about it, or if they simply remain silent. I think much attention should be directed towards the use of “identity politics” as a code-word for alleged left-leaning racism. BTW, people of various groups have banded together in perfectly legitimate ways, eg as women as part and parcel of the history of democracy (as an effort and an ideal, if not necessarily a reality) in the US and elsewhere. It makes perfect sense for a group that has been marginalized, like gays, to come together and fight for equal rights. It is the logic of pluralist society, and yet it is condemned, and its deployment in this instance — by George sWill, by Kraphammer (who at least had the good sense to backhandedly call for Sotomayor’s approval by the Senate since), by Cass and by others.
Where were these figures (many of whom, like the above, were around then) condemning “identity” politics when Thurgood Marshall’s seat was filled by Bush I’s appointment of Clarence Thomas (who was hardly supremely qualified, as Sotomayor is)? The notion is not that someone latina is “better” because of their identity than a white male, but that a court that had, up through 1966 ALL white males for centuries needs diversity. If the court had all latinas, that too would be similarly one-sided, not that this is likely.
The answer to your question? As soon as they figure out that the other smears aren’t working.
My guess? Monday or Tuesday.